re: Home gun safe

While the quick access of an electronic lock is appealing I prefer a good S&G dial lock as it has no electronics to fail. In a perfect world, I'd like to have both but those are uncommon.

When looking at fire ratings remember that those are for a certain temperature limit and duration, it's not absolute. Consider where you plan to put your safe from a fire point of view. For example if it's going to be in the basement and your home is fully engulfed in a fire, the contents of the safe probably won't survive. Consider putting it next to an outside wall which, in a fire, would collapse and expose the safe to outside relatively lower temps. Finally on fire rating, consider how close you are to the nearest fire station.

Make sure you use some good lag bolts to secure the safe to the floor, otherwise it's easy for a thief to tip it over and take a grinder to the thinner back/side panels or just cart if off completely for those I've seen put their safe in the garage. If you have the space, and you're putting it next to an outside wall, put another partial wall on the other side of the safe so it's only exposed on the front and maybe top. Making a little cubby area for the safe.

Lastly, the line about "buying bigger than you need" gets a lot of play but I'm much more of an advocate for instead of getting one really big safe, get 2 or 3 (or more) mid-sized safes and put them in different locations to distribute your risk. Because if someone DID get into your one big safe they've got everything.