If you own a firearm, how do you store and secure it in your home?

Hanging from my finger by the trigger guard, because you just never know.

One in the living room at all times-loaded, more in a locked back room. We have no children in the home.

Rifles stored in a safe with the bolts or bolt carriers removed and stored in a different safe with the ammunition. I keep a handgun in a quick access safe. It uses a code and I can open it in a couple of seconds.

If they are locked away, are they useful for home defense?

I keep my grenades in my kitchen unsecured in case I need access to them quickly. My rocket launchers locked in my garage.

Quick access handgun safes are what you should use for home defense. You don’t really use rifles for that.

@RocketGuy Depends on your area and threat level.
For me, I need quick access as I live off I-44 which is a known drug and human trafficking corridor. Lots of skeeters walk down it constantly so the threat is high.

@Blackwater_Park‘s quick unlock is the best idea if you have kids or other’s in the house.

I had a coworker who kept a shotgun for home defense – less accuracy needed to keep the bad guys away. He wasn’t planning for a full on assault by paramilitary on his home.

@RocketGuy Buckshot doesnt miss at close range, haha!

Pretty horrific thing to do to someone though.

@Blackwater_Park You must not deal with crackheads much. And far more merciful than what they did to an old lady down the road.

We have them, the large city nearby cleared out a bunch of homeless camps and did not allow them to come back. They fled to the suburban areas and setup camps there. The Greenways and wooded areas that used to be safe and quiet are their new camps. One of them borders my neighborhood. A large percentage are druggies. Thefts and other crime went way up fast here. The county does not seem to care about the middle class neighborhoods. If they were in the wealthy part they would probably do something.

@Blackwater_Park Oh wow that’s terrible. Our crackheads are not homeless. They are hardened criminals with no respect for anyone or anything.

I’d take the homeless over a crackhead any day.

You say that, but let me tell you it’s almost always one or a combination of three things keeping people homeless here: drug problems, mental health problems or legal problems. Some crazy fucker took a steak knife and cut up an elderly jogger for no apparent reason here a little while ago. This was less than half a mile from my house. Just four years ago my neighbors would tell you they leave their house unlocked. Not now…then there are the assholes who go down a whole street cutting off all the catalytic converters. Home invasions are way up too.

@Blackwater_Park Yeah that sounds familiar, cat thieves hit the cities hard, even church parking lots during service.

I own four guns.

Two pistols, one shotgun, and one hunting caliber rifle. I’m licensed for concealed carry and keep one pistol with me for protection. The other guns stay at home in locked safes that are finger print keyed.

One of the smartest things Oregon has done is pass legislation requiring gun owners to secure & protect their weapons :
https://giffords.org/lawcenter/state-laws/safe-storage-in-oregon/

I follow the law.

@JLoon

Would consider the AR15 to be a high-powered rifle?

@Brian1946 – I think I understand what you’re asking and don’t want to get too technical – but the AR15 is just a particular design with certain operating features, and can be made in almost any caliber from low power to “high power”.

So the honest answer is, it depends.

For example my hunting rifle is 270 caliber, but not an AR style platform. The majority of AR15 rifles bought in the US are in 5.56 Nato, smaller than my rifle but popular because it has lighter recoil and the ammo is cheap & easy to find.

AR platform rifles are generally small to medium calibur. They’re typically chambered in 5.56 or the nearly identical .223. You also often find them chambered for .22LR which is a light rimfire generally just used for plinking or pesting. To have “high power” you need the AR -15’s bigger brother, the AR-10 which can be chambered in something like a .308. There is absolutely nothing special about an AR-15 in itself. It’s just a style that can be adapted to many uses. Some military grade versions of these with select fire are what are called assault rifles, but that’s not something you can just buy without a lot of cash, permission and tons of restrictions. New ones can’t be sold, you can only get old, grandfathered ones. They’re effectively banned for public use.

They’re not what a would-be mass shooter should use if they want to do what they do. I think the media has provided a roadmap for these people and told them an AR-15 is the way to go so that’s what they use. This and they’re just ubiquitous. When people want to ban this specific type of rifle I’m going to roll my eyes. That’s like banning black rifles and not pink ones.

My shotgun is in the closet, unloaded. My .22 rifle is in a gun case under my bed, also unloaded. My .22 revolver is next to my bed where I can easily reach it and it is loaded. (I’m the only person in this house.)

@Blackwater_Park “There is absolutely nothing special about an AR-15 in itself.”

The concern many have is its ability to send out a lot of lead in a brief period of time. The numbers I’ve seen indicate a rounds per minute between 600–950 as the maximum for the weapon. People can’t pull the trigger that fast, but the platform is designed to handle it. There are mods that can easily convert it into something that is much closer to an M16’s rate of fire. Compare that with a bolt-action style hunting rifle, or a pump-action shotgun where the rate of fire is much slower and allows windows of opportunity for unarmed people to charge an active shooter to take him down.

As to the question, I own a crossbow for self-defense. We keep it hidden in a closet. If there’s an intruder, our first instinct is to run and call the police. It’s really just a plan Z weapon when every other option fails.

“600–950 as the maximum for the weapon” let me dispell that real quick. Full auto can do that, an AR-15 can’t. Generally speaking, one can put out about 30 per min which is the extended magazine capacity. Those “mods” are not so easy, highly, highly illegal and pretty uncommon. Also the vast majority of firearms out there operate like an AR-15. Magazine capacity again, is the issue.

@Blackwater_Park Are you saying that if an AR-15 was modified to full auto, the properties of the platform wouldn’t allow that kind of rate of fire (e.g. the barrel would melt or something?). I don’t think a bolt-action hunting rifle could handle that kind of rate of fire if you were to MacGyver some contraption to make it fully auto. That’s my point.

There are only a handful of states where bump stocks are illegal for example. Something like that isn’t going to turn a bolt action hunting rifle into something that can achieve a high rounds per minute rate.

“Generally speaking, one can put out about 30 per min”

That may be true, but people don’t fire like that. The point is people can shoot in bursts at a RATE approaching fully auto with mods like bump stocks that are legal in the vast majority of the country and the weapon platform handles it just fine (as I understand it).

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Take one person and arm him with pump action shotguns, manually cocking handguns and bolt-action rifles and all of the ammunition he wants and tell him to kill as many kids in a school as he can before being killed/apprehended. Now repeat with an AR-15 or similar civilian version of a military weapon platform. How many more/less kids get killed? Then tell me how “...there is absolutely nothing special about an AR-15 in itself.”

@gorillapaws magazine capacity limits will make a difference. Bumpstocks are mostly illegal now as they should be, very uncommon and quite honestly a pump shotgun is way more devastating and would do more harm than an AR-15. The rate of fire is slower sure, but the amount of lead in the air is nuts. I still don’t get the fixation on the AR-15. I mean ban it, sure. That won’t stop the next shooter. It just won’t.

@Blackwater_Park “That won’t stop the next shooter. It just won’t.”

I’m sure there would still be shootings but the number of dead/wounded would be lower. I don’t understand the fixation with people who want semi-auto versions of military weapons in the hands of civilians. A shotgun is the better choice for home defense (not to mention having a dog and security cameras), and bolt action rifles/bows are perfectly adequate for hunting. Likewise for ammunition. Armor piercing rounds makes no sense for civilians to have access to.

You’re not getting it. There is nothing special about an AR-15 vs other guns. There is nothing about it that’s going to cause more loss of life vs other common weapons. I think at first it got used a lot because it’s like the Toyota Camry of guns. There were just a lot of them out there, they’re adaptable with tons of parts and options available so a lot of people have them. Then the media fixated on the fact that it’s “military style” but that’s all cosmetic. It just looks military. It’s as if this association is now driving these mass shooters to use them. I mean a typical ruger .22 operates exactly the same as do most handguns, rifles… Most small to medium calibur arms operate semi-auto with detachable magazines. It’s not special. I’m telling you what matters is and will continue to be, magazine capacity. The next biggest thing is how easy it is to buy firearms in general. I think the same permitting process for a carry permit should be the minimum it takes to buy any firearm. It’s classroom and range training, extended background checks, and most importantly, it takes time and effort.

@Blackwater_Park ”...it’s “military style” but that’s all cosmetic. It just looks military.”

Are you saying that an AR-15 with a modification like a bump stock can’t handle a high rate of fire like it’s military counterpart? Other than the semi-auto limitation, is there any difference between an AR-15 and it’s fully-auto equivalent? This isn’t about cosmetics, it’s about performance.

As for magazines, you can buy a 3d printer for a couple-hundred bucks. It’s really not hard to make magazines as large as you want if you have a weapon platform that’s designed to handle high rates of fire. The AR-15 and the civilian AK-47 perform amazingly well in these circumstances. I’ve fired them, and it’s crazy how easy it is for an untrained dude like me to pick one up and just start accurately putting rounds on a target with almost no recoil. They were engineered for exactly this purpose. A ruger .22 was not.

@gorillapaws. I’m not going to try to explain to you much longer. You’re not a gun person and you clearly don’t get it. This “high rate of fire” thing you keep harping on is not intrinsic to an AR-15. They’re not high rate of fire. For the 100th time. Magazine capacity limits rate to like 30. A 3d printed mag is not going to hold up well if at all. It’s not easy for most people to make. A Ruger .22 absolutely can handle the same rate of fire as an AR-15 if not even more.

@Blackwater_Park, and @gorillapaws – I think you guys are both making an honest effort to understand what happened in tragedies like Uvalde and Buffalo, and how we can prevent more of these murders. But it’s apparent you’re getting stuck on the technical aspect of the weapons that were used, and missing other factors that may be more important.

Unfortunately I think that’s how this debate will play out nationally, and why we’ll fail again to do anything that will really help. We push the same arguments over and over, without any new information. Part of the reason is that for over 20 years “conservative” lawmakers used a 1996 bubget amendment to block federal funding for research on gun violence:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993413/

The ban was finally lifted in 2020, and the new data on firearm-related deaths in the US is interesting – and maybe helpful. But only if recognize that stopping mass killings means doing more than focusing on what kind of gun a shooter used, and looking instead at why, how, and when these sick and dangerous people committed their crimes.

@JLoon ”...But only if recognize that stopping mass killings means doing more than focusing on what kind of gun a shooter used, and looking instead at why, how, and when these sick and dangerous people committed their crimes.”

I would completely agree with this if we substituted “in addition to” for “instead.”

I believe there’s a “lethality ceiling” that should be imposed on weapons available to civilians. We can universally agree (I would hope) that civilians shouldn’t have access to WMDs, tanks, RPGs, high explosives, fully automatic weapons, etc. I think that semiautomatic weapons should also be added to this list. If people want weapons that require pumping, cocking, etc. between shots for personal protection/hunting/target shooting, I can live with that. Yes you can still kill lots of people with these, but such a ceiling will reduce (not eliminate) the harm such people can cause. Further, I think it’s reasonable to restrict the types of ammunition sold to exclude armor piercing rounds and the muzzle energy of those weapons/ammunition. To what level? Whatever level is necessary for police with body armor and ballistic shields etc. to feel confident enough to move in on such a person and not wait outside for fear of their lives.

If we want to additionally implement programs to reduce/eliminate bullying, identify/help at-risk people, help the mentally ill in general, and place additional restrictions on who can buy a gun, and how they buy it, I’m also all-in for that too. If you want public funding for studies to analyze the psychology of such people, I’m with you 100%. Laws to require storing weapons securely and responsibly—absolutely!

It’s a cost/benefit calculation in my mind. The benefits of civilians having access to semiautomatic weapons, armor piercing ammo, .50 cal anti-material weapons, etc. is far outweighed by the harm and potential harm they can cause.

NOTHING will ever change in the us with this, you need to attack the things you can , license for buying and storing ammunition, banning high capacity magazines, do you really need a fifty round mag to hunt game with?
Mental health back ground checks should be a must, if you have any violent crime record your banned from owning a firearm.
And implement a safe storage law,if ya need quick access then have one of those finger type combination lock safes .
STOP trying to go after the gun itself ,the other side wont let you do anything in that field, so make a safer nation by going another way.
Or just complain when shooting after shooting comes on the news.

I don’t know what everyone is talking about. Clearly, since we live in a post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare, we should just make schools more like prisons and educators should be military personel. All “teachers” should have grenades and flameflowers by their side at all times.

We can complain all we want, but the fact is that the US is not unique. Every other country on earth is a shithole like us. We just need to have the balls to go all in and arm everyone as soon as they can hold a gun (or chemical weapon). The only way to reduce the gun culture in the US is to make more guns and bombs, subsidize them, and train everyone to use them. Everyone should have suicide vests on the ready!

Note: Background checks are unnecessary. We can see skin tone without wasting valuable money.

@SQUEEKY2 “NOTHING will ever change in the us with this, you need to attack the things you can…”

The majority of Americans support an assault weapon ban. We had one for years. I agree with all of the other suggestions you’ve proposed as well (as most Americans do I’m sure).

Doesn’t matter the NRA and the Rep/cons will never let any ban happen no matter how many kids get shot,that is why you have to change the things you can to make it safer,I keep telling you attack other things involved leave the gun alone.

Assault weapons are already effectively banned. I just don’t see going after semi-autos. That’s the majority of guns out there. I generally follow the line of thinking that @SQUEEKY2 has mentioned. Safe storage laws, better permitting and vetting. More delays and hoops that make it harder for someone troubled to go out and do this on a whim or raising attention to their plans. By the way, the “assault weapons ban” that expired was no such thing. It was feel-good legislation that only made certain cosmetic features illegal and it was utterly, completely ridiculous. You could still buy the same weapons, they functioned the same, you just had a thumbhole and not a pistol grip or a stock you could not adjust for a shooters frame or you can’t mount a flashlight on it anymore. It’ll just be that all over again on a new “assault weapons ban” but you’ll feel good about it, at least until there is another shooting.