Lisa J Thompson
It is necessary to know how tough your gun safe can be. Check the article below for the answer to the big question “are gun safes bulletproof?”.
Gun safes are an important property of weapon ownership. They not only provide security from burglars and family members, but they also serve a dual purpose in keeping valuables safe from fire in the event of a fire.
In this article, to further understand how firm your safes can be, we will go through the biggest myth many people have been wondering: “are gun safes bulletproof?” and some other questions regarding this product.
Are Gun Safes Bulletproof?
No gun safe is completely bulletproof. However, this can be improved significantly by building a safe with better materials. These products are built from steel ranging from 14 gauge to 7 gauge, with the 7 gauge type being the thickest.
To easily understand this, just remember: the lower the number, the thicker the steel. And the thicker the steel, the better the protection against bullets.
In addition, some companies can also make the safes less penetrable. As the safes are manufactured, a layer of metal is placed to the inside of the safe similar to that used in bulletproof vests.
Hence, they aren’t bulletproof by default, but the owners can ask the manufacturer to make them bulletproof if they want to.
Can You Shoot The Lock Off A Gun Safe
Now that we’ve skimmed through numerous ways to break into a safe, and indeed every single one of them requires some serious techniques. But what about the old-fashioned way? Is it possible to shoot a safe to open it?
Since there are dozens of ways to crack a safe open, it is obvious that no safe is 100% indestructible, which means you can shoot the lock off a safe.
Don’t worry! Every safe worth its salt nowadays comes with at least one relocker. When enough force is applied to the safe, the relocker engages. Even if the lock is blasted off the door, the relocker stops the bolts or bars from unlocking.
If your safe’s lock is broken, a relocker is meant to keep your belongings safe. So rest assured that even if a thief tries to break into your gun safe, it will remain locked.
How Tough Is Your Gun Safe?
One of the most common purposes for purchasing a safe has always been to protect their important properties and guns. But how safe can these massive chunks of metal really be?
To answer this, let’s dig deeper into the most frequent methods used by thieves to get access to your safe, as well as how a good safe can protect you from being robbed.
Knock The Safe Door Open
A burglar can easily break the door off a safe in only a few minutes with a couple of tools, such as some crowbars and a detailed design of the safe. This is called a pry attack or a pry assault.
Pry assaults are the most prevalent approach utilized because of their simplicity. Such attacks can easily exploit the fragility of simpler bolts and the weak rivets that hold them together with the bar that basically helps open the safe.
Manufacturers will prevent this by adding a lot of distinctive features to secure the safe. Furthermore, sometimes to protect the safes even more, manufacturers just need to create locking bars composed of a firm piece of 7 gauge steel to guard against pry assaults.
Pushing The Handle
If breaking the door off a safe fails, a burglar could try to push the handle, a.k.a a torque attack. By performing this technique, the locking gears will move in some safes that are low quality, causing the bolts to be released and the safe to be opened.
To prevent this from happening we have something that works like a ratchet. This particular feature makes sure that the mechanism is set in place, preventing anything from spinning out of order until the gears are correctly freed.
Literally, Tear The Safe Apart
As your safe is made of a huge amount of steel, a burglar may be able to burst the seams with an enormous hammer and more effort than usual. And if criminals burst the seams, grab the metal, and pull it apart, your safe may be peeled like a banana.
To prevent this from happening, remember the phrase “Less is more”. The greatest choice for your home security will be safe bodies made of no more than 3 tough pieces of metal. Peeling these safes is significantly more challenging.
Types Of Gun Safes
Different varieties of gun safes exist, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Take a look at the many sorts of gun safes below to see which one can genuinely provide you with the protection and value for your money (notice that some high-end gun safes may be a combination of these types):
Combination Safe
The combination safe is the most basic and widely used form. It doesn’t require any extra power sources to secure the safe, such as a battery or electrical components. All you have to do to unlock the lock and open the door using the right three-digit code.
It is generally the least expensive form of gun safe available because it just has a mechanical lock. This gun safe’s disadvantage is that it takes longer to open. In an emergency, it’s easy to make a mistake with the combination and struggle to unlock it.
Digital Lock Safe
A digital lock on a gun safe is a step up from a combination lock. A digital number pad will replace the dial pad for entering a combination code. The advantage of digital lock safes is that the code may be reset at any moment, making them more secure.
Because digital safes contain electrical components and require electricity, there will be a tiny percentage of the time when the keypad will not function. Most digital safes have a backup key in case the electronic components fail, or at the very least, a warning when the battery power is running low.
Biometric Safe
In comparison to the other gun safe kinds, the biometric safe is the most sophisticated. You don’t need to memorize a combination code. Simply use your fingerprint to unlock your safe (some high-end safes also allow retinal scan, face recognition, or voice recognition).
It’s also more secure because only the appropriate individuals have access. Most biometric variants can store up to 100 distinct fingerprints.
How To Break Into A Gun Safe?
The majority of gun safes are difficult to break into. However, not all gun safes are created equal. A persistent burglar can crack into any safe you can buy with enough time and knowledge.
Besides some frequently-used-by-burglars methods mentioned above, there are a decent number of other ways to break into a gun safe:
Cutting The Safe Open
This approach is perhaps the most impracticable because of the amount of time it takes to open this container, especially ones built of solid construction. To do this, you can use a saw or grinder to cut the metal body of the safe.
Bouncing The Safe
Smaller gun safes can also be accessed by bouncing or lowering the safe to open the lock. Thieves commonly utilize this since they may move the handle when the safe’s lock bounces with luck and the correct time.
Brute Force Combination Lock
If you have a mechanical gun safe, the possibilities for opening the lock are virtually limitless. For electronic locks, this is not the case; a limited amount of incorrect codes will typically prevent you from opening the safe.
You can estimate the right codes for mechanically locked safes. However, it will take a long time. Thieves don’t utilize this approach since they won’t have much time to guess the code unless they’re fortunate and just need a few tries.
Conclusion
Hopefully, our rapid-fire question-and-answer session solved the biggest mystery of all time “are gun safes bulletproof?”. In addition, we hope this article gives you a better understanding of the gun safe you’re considering purchasing or the one you already own.
To conclude, your product may not be bulletproof, but it’s secure enough to keep thieves from taking your goods away.
