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The days of displaying guns proudly in a glass-fronted cabinet are over—and that’s where a gun safe comes in. Responsible gun owners want to keep their firearms out of sight and locked away from thieves and curious kids. It’s not just a good idea, but it’s the law in some places to provide secure storage for guns in your home.
Gun safes come in a variety of sizes, from one-pistol models designed to keep home defense guns locked up but immediately accessible to massive vaults that house entire collections of long guns like shotguns and rifles. Any safe can be broken into, but the better safes will frustrate anyone besides a professional burglar and all of them will keep guns out of the hands of kids who shouldn’t touch them without supervision. Safes can also protect your guns from fire. Burglars might pick and choose what they take. Fire takes everything and a fireproof safe, properly sited, gives your guns a chance to survive a house fire.
There are lots to look at when you shop for safes. How many guns will it hold? Is the interior adjustable? How secure is it? How quickly can you get into it? Will it keep your guns safe in a fire? We put this guide together to help you find the best gun safe for you.
Best Fireproof: Cabela’s Signature E-Lock 50-Gun Safe
Best Small: ProVault 12-Gun Safe by Liberty
Best for Pistols: Vaultek MXi Biometric Handgun Safe
Best for Long Guns: Steelwater 45-Gun Heavy Duty Safe
Best for Home: ProVault E-Lock 18-Gun Safe by Liberty
Best Fireproof: Cabela’s Signature E-Lock 50-Gun Safe
Specs
Capacity: 39 long guns plus handguns and accessories
Dimensions: 72.5 x 42 x 32 inches
Weight: 1,585 pounds
Pros
Heavy steel walls
Long-lasting fire protection
Customizable interior with plush upholstery and lighting
Cons
Massive; not a good choice if you move often
Expensive, if worth it
This Magnum E-lock 50-gun Safe offers the utmost security for valuable collections with the thickest walls and longest fire protection. It features walls made of 7 gauge steel, the heaviest steel used in gun safe manufacturing. According to Browning’s ratings, those walls are insulated with 16 layers of fireboard and a door with a heat-expanding seal to provide 2.5 hours of fire protection at 1,200 degrees. Inside, the safe features a rack in the door for your most-often used guns and a customizable interior complete with a jewelry drawer, plush upholstery, a dehumidifier, and interior lighting. We like this safe best for the person who has found their “forever home” since it weighs a staggering 1,585 pounds. It makes the safe a real bear to move, so it’s best for someone who has settled for the long haul.
Best Small: ProVault 12-Gun Safe by Liberty
Specs
Capacity: 12 guns
Dimensions: 59 x 18 x 16 inches
Weight: 247 pounds
Pros
Compact size
Manageable weight
Offers some fire protection
Good value
Cons
Tight fit for 12 guns
At only 247 pounds, this is a safe that two people can wrestle into place. It’s narrow enough to fit discreetly in a closet where it’s out of sight of anyone coming into the house or peering through a window.
The safe has pre-drilled holes, so you can bolt it to the wall and floor to compensate for its light weight. The external hinges let the door open wide so you can get at your guns, which rest in racks along the back and sides of the safe, and an upper shelf allows you to store ammo or handguns. This is a solid option for anyone with less than 10 guns who doesn’t really have any plans to add more to their collection. It’s a great option for hunters who only focus on one or two species of game. Although the safe has room for 12 guns, it’s much better for seven or eight, unless you rarely get your guns out of storage.
Best for Pistols: Vaultek MXi Biometric Handgun Safe
Specs
Capacity: 8 handguns
Dimensions: 15 x 11.5 x 11.6 inches
Weight: 32 pounds
Pros
Biometric and keypad opening
Modular interior
WiFi function sends tampering, temperature, and other alerts
Cons
No fire protection
This safe holds up to eight handguns and has a modular interior that can be configured to hold valuables and magazines. It has 14 gauge steel walls and a 12 gauge steel door to keep unauthorized people out. For anyone worried about access in an emergency, both biometric and keypad open instantly when you press in the code. And it holes up to 20 fingerprints in its memory on the scanner. The interior is illuminated to help you find what you’re looking for inside. The safe is drilled and comes with mounting hardware allowing you to secure it in a bedroom, office, or closet. The unique WiFi capability lets you monitor tampering or disturbance from wherever you are and gives you updates on temperature and humidity as well. This is a solid option for anyone who just owns a few handguns for self-defense, and wants to be able to access them in a hurry.
Best for Long Guns: Steelwater 45-Gun Heavy Duty Safe
Specs
Capacity: 45 long guns plus door organizer holds 8 handguns and other items
Dimensions: 72 x 42 x 27 5/8 inches
Weight: 892 pounds
Pros
Good value in a high-end product
Somewhat lighter than comparable safes
Large drill plate in door protects more of the safe from burglar tool attacks
Cons
Expensive
Difficult to move
Steelwater safes provide top-notch protection at a much lower price than other safes due to their direct-to-consumer sales. They have all the niceties of other high-end safes such as interior LED lighting, user-customizable shelving, and humidty protection. Designed by the company owner who has both law-enforcement experience and many years in the gun safe industry, Steelwater safes have many attack-resistant features like longer bolts, heavier-duty hinges and a larger lock plate to better resist burglars. This safe also boasts a fire rating of two hours at 1,875 degrees, which is far hotter than the average house fire. This is another option we recommend mainly for people with extremely large firearms collections who have their long-term home settled. This isn’t the type of safe you’ll likely want to move more than once.
Best for Home: ProVault E-Lock 18-Gun Safe by Liberty
Specs
Capacity: 18 long guns
Dimensions: 20 x 24.25 x 59.5 inches
Weight: 334 pounds
Pros
UL certified electronic lock with hard lockplate
Multiple fireboard layers for fire protection
Hardened external hinges open wide
Cons
Non-customizable interior
Not California compliant
This safe packs a lot of protection and adequate capacity into a price tag below $1,000. Made of 14 gauge steel, this safe is still sturdy. But it doesn’t weigh as much as thicker-walled safes, so two non-professionals with a dolly can move it. The doors bolt with 10 military-style flat rectangular bolts. The door is a full inch thick to defeat tool attacks, and there are multiple layers of fireboard inside.
The interior shelving is divided into two halves; one to keep a few guns you frequently use handy, and the other for storing the “safe queens.” There’s also a shelf for handguns or accessories that you might have to remove if you own long sporting clays or trap shotguns. The interior is carpeted. Another reason we like this one for a home or apartment is simply because the footprint of this safe is much smaller and more manageable for the smaller living space.
How We Picked the Best Gun Safes
As gun ownership rises in the United States, so does the number of safes on the market. And there’s much more variety among them, too, as safes are now more than places to store hunting guns. We looked at several different kinds of safes from many makers. We evaluated them for the level of protection they offered against theft, which involved examining the safe’s materials, its bolting system, whether its locks were UL listed, and if it also included important features like a relocker that keeps the safe closed even if the lock is destroyed.
With so much of gun ownership now focused on self-defense handguns, it was also important to look at safes that allowed quick, reliable access to a gun in a home, business, or car. They need to be secure, obviously, but have to open every time. We looked at the different types of locks—keypad, RFID systems, and biometric locks—to determine which ones were the least likely to fail in an emergency.
What To Look for in a Gun Safe
Buying a gun safe to keep your valuable firearms secure is an important decision. A large safe is a once-in-a-lifetime purchase for most people, and it’s important to get one that suits your current and future needs. And, if you need to keep a home defense gun safely locked away but instantly accessible, choosing the best gun safe can literally be a matter of life and death.
Capacity
The biggest regret of most safe shoppers is that they didn’t buy a big enough safe. Gun collections grow. Choose a safe with a listed capacity of one and a half to two times the number of guns you have to store. Most safe interiors are made to hold guns quite close together to maximize capacity. Rifle and shotgun bolts and bolt handles and bulky scopes can all ding the gun next to them. You’ll want to be able to leave an empty slot next to some of your guns.
Security
If break-ins are rare in your neighborhood, all you might need is an inexpensive safe to keep guns out of the hands of children, or to keep them locked away out of sight to keep honest people honest. If your collection is valuable, you’ll need to consider security features carefully. There are several things to look for. First, choose a lock that is UL (Underwriter’s Laboratory) listed. An internal, drill-proof hardplate helps protect a lock against drill attacks. A relocker locks the safe shut if the lock is destroyed. Finally, look at how many sides of the door have bolts. Most safes only have bolts opposite the hinges. The best gun safes feature bolts on both sides as well as on the top and bottom of the door.
Fire Protection
A fire-resistant model can keep its contents safe long enough for the fire department to arrive. Unlike locks, which are UL tested, there is no one body that gives out fire ratings, and different manufacturers use different standards. Find out how many layers of fireboard are built into the walls when you’re comparing safes.
Access
Electronic locks are practically standard now on the best gun safes, although some people still prefer old-fashioned mechanical locks. Most electronic locks run for years per battery, and can be unlocked manually if need be, and some can be quickly keyed in the dark if you need instant access to a home defense gun. Biometric locks add an extra level of security because they require both the right fingerprints and the right combination to open.
FAQs
Q: Are gun safes bulletproof?
Whether a safe is bullet-resistant depends on the thickness of the steel and the velocity of the bullet. A safe with a ⅜-inch steel plate—which is quite thick—can resist any handgun caliber and some rifle bullets as well. Shooting your way in through the walls of a safe would be very difficult. Most high-quality safes feature relockers, which lock the door automatically if the lock is destroyed, so shooting the lock to open the safe won’t work either.
Q: What should I look for when shopping for a gun safe?
The most important decision is how big a safe to buy. Hardly anyone ever wishes they had bought a smaller safe, and many regret not going bigger. Choose a safe that holds one and a half to two times as many guns as you currently plan to store.
Consider your security needs. If all you need to do is keep guns away from kids, you don’t need a top-of-the-line safe. If you have a lot of money tied up in guns, then you want to spend some more and get a safe that’s harder to break into. Buy a safe with a lock that is UL listed, and look for an internal hardplate and a relocker that keeps the safe shut if the lock is destroyed.
Fire protection is another concern. The average home fire usually burns at 1100 degrees for 15 minutes before it’s extinguished. If you put a safe with a high degree of fire protection near a basement wall, you have a chance to save your guns and all the other keepsakes and valuables that wind up inside.
Q: Is a gun safe worth it?
The days of keeping guns in glass fronted cabinets or on the nightstand are over. Smart gun owners keep their guns locked up and out of sight. Also, a safe is a much better place to store a gun than in an unbreathable gun case which can lead to rust problems. And, some safes offer fire protection as well. Not only is it worth the money you spend on a safe to protect your investment in firearms and to make sure they don’t fall into the wrong hands, but safe storage is also the law in some places.
A safe also makes sense if you want to keep a gun handy for home defense. A small bedside safe with a keypad or biometric lock keeps your gun close by and instantly accessible while also keeping it out of curious hands.
Q: Can guns rust inside a safe?
Gun safes are not air-tight, so the keeping a gun in a safe as opposed to an unbreathable hard or soft gun case isn’t as risky in terms of corrosion. However, guns can absolutely rust inside a safe, especially if you live in a humid climate. The likelihood increases if you put your safe in garage or building that’s not climate-controlled. There are several in-safe dehumidifiers and rechargeable silica gel packs on the market that you should consider. Also, always be sure to clean guns and wipe them down with a lightly-oiled rag before you put them away. If you bring a gun in from the cold, condensation can form on it, so be sure to wipe it down even if you didn’t shoot it.
Q: What is the most fireproof gun safe?
There are several good, fire-resistant safes on the market. However, it’s impossible to tell which is the most fireproof, as there are no standardized ratings. Individual manufacturers are free to conduct their own tests and establish their own ratings. As you shop for safes, you can choose the highest-rated safe in a particular manufacturer’s lineup. You can also look to see how many layers of fireboard the safe has in its walls, and check if it has an expanding fire seal.
As you study fire ratings, remember that the average house fire burns at 1100 degrees and most fires are over within 30 minutes. If you live out in the country where fire response times are longer, you might want a highly rated safe.
Final Thoughts
The best gun safe for you depends on the number of guns you own, your security and fire protection needs, and your budget. An inexpensive safe can be enough to keep your guns locked up out of sight, and that’s enough security for many people. The more valuable your collection, the more you might want to spend on security and on fire protection.
If you want to keep a home defense gun locked but ready in your bedroom, spend whatever you need to for a good, reliable safe that will open instantly in the dark. Even the best one and two-pistol safes don’t cost much, and it doesn’t make sense to scrimp if you believe you need to protect yourself with lethal force.
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For more than 125 years, Field & Stream has been providing readers with honest and authentic coverage of outdoor gear. Our writers and editors eat, sleep, and breathe the outdoors, and that passion comes through in our product reviews. You can count on F&S to keep you up to date on the best new gear. And when we write about a product—whether it’s a bass lure or a backpack—we cover the good and the bad, so you know exactly what to expect before you decide to make a purchase.
