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Or you can do like we do, drive a clunker and leave nothing in plain site, I think most BG's take pity on us. Nice cars and stuff left on the seat or console motivates a bunch of bad guys.

jamullinstx wrote:I use the bioBOX from Sequiam (now bioMETRX). You can find a description at this link:

http://www.sequiam.com/products/index.php

Do a Google search on the product to find online sources. I paid $179 for mine, so shop around. The list price is around $249. I use it at my bedside, for airline travel and in my car. It has a cable that you can wrap around a spare tire lug, tie-down lug, luggage frame, etc., to hinder removal. It accepts 6 fingerprints, but that is misleading since each print requires one backup, so it is really only 3. Nonetheless, I find it extremely compact and useful. It is not a vault or safe, but it should discourage the casual theif.

Bonc_CHL wrote:Does anyone out there have suggestions for when you have to leave you gun in the car.
Where do you keep it? Any small safe ideas?
Thoughts, comments, complaints, concerns, etc?
\Joe

Love this description from their website (emphasis mine):

bioVAULT, offered by bioMETRX, is the ultimate solution for protecting important papers or potentially dangerous firearms. bioVAULT provides safe storage and simple controlled access for handguns, weapons, ammunition, jewerly and other valuble items.

I have been using a Center of Mass combination lock box for about a year now. It stays under the passenger seat tied with a cable to the seat supports. The box is large enough to easily hold my full size Beretta 92. The combo lock eliminates the need to carry another key. It works first time - every time. Inexpensive too.

Sangiovese wrote:

rdcrags wrote:Maybe I'm weird about this, but if one or more of my guns are taken from the house or car, it's just something else to put on the list to State Farm when reporting the break-in. I don't lock them up anywhere except at the airport when checking the suitcase. My guns are not ancient collector's items. Insurance money can replace them.

For me, it's about my responsibility to take reasonable measures to keep my guns out of the hands of criminals. Different people have different views on it... some think that we shouldn't have to do more than lock our doors - it's not our fault if a criminal breaks in and gets our guns. But the way I see it - we shouldn't have to carry weapons to protect ourselves and our families, but we do. Most of us do a lot that we "shouldn't have to do" in order to protect our families. Securing our weapons is just one more of those things.

While I agree that you should not have any civil or criminal liability if someone breaks into your car, steals your weapon, and uses it to kill someone... I do know that I personally would feel pretty lousy about it if I knew that I didn't take precautions that are very affordable and easy to implement. "Affordable and easy" varies for everyone, so I don't judge others by what works for me. I just wish that gun owners would all do what they can to safeguard their weapons. After all, if that dark day comes when a criminal attacks you or a family member, there is a good chance that they got their weapon from someone who did not do much to prevent them from stealing it - and instead took the stance that, "I shouldn't have to lock my stuff up - people should not break into my home/car."

Related to the original topic... before I got my car safe, I frequently took the slide off my pistol and put it in my pocket if I had to go somewhere I couldn't carry (like a properly posted hospital to visit a relative). The thought was that the BG might get most of my weapon, but he certainly wouldn't be able to use against anyone without the missing piece. Didn't cost a dime, but did require more handling of the weapon inside my vehicle than I liked.

I see your point, and wouldn't argue with it. How many of you lock up your kitchen knives for the same reason?

rdcrags

TX CHL 1997
CO CHP 2001

I drive a convertible sports car, so it has the benefit of being both small (no place to stow things) and not secure at all in the cabin. My philosophy is to not leave anything of value in the car and never lock the car. OTOH, the trunk of my car is very secure since it's a steel box that you cannot get to from inside the car's cabin.

I keep a pistol rug (rectangular one that came with an Uncle Mike's range bag) in my car under the passenger seat. When I have to leave the gun in the car for any reason, I put it in the rug and put that in the trunk and lock the trunk. Normally I am also putting my laptop and my messenger bag containing any other things of value I have with me in the trunk along with the gun, so this park-and-then-put-stuff-in-the-trunk routine happens nearly every time I stop somewhere other than home or the office.

The problem with disarming in the car is that you are almost guaranteed to expose the gun while disarming. So for me the much better plan is to either know ahead of time that I am going to a place not allowing guns, in which case I move the gun to my bag before getting in the car (I can get to it in the bag while in the car faster than I can get to it on my hip anyway), or I just elect not to go to the place not allowing guns. If the BG who intends to break into your car sees you doing the disarming dance in the car then I wonder if your car won't get hit just so the BG can get the gun? I think a big screwdriver or crow bar will get into one of those little gunvaults pretty easily.

mr.72 wrote:I think a big screwdriver or crow bar will get into one of those little gunvaults pretty easily.

While they aren't massive, or even tremendously secure, the way most are constructed don't make them easy or quick to pop open. And the last is, to me, the important issue.

Smash-and-grabs are crimes of convenience. Generally, the thief wants to be in and out as quickly as possible; certainly if the vehicle has an alarm or if it's parked in an active, public area. That's why folks that are vitimized will often find some valuable items left behind, but gone are the ones that can be snatched without much effort.

The little Center of Mass vaults, which is what I use, close tightly enough that, while a screwdriver blade can be inserted part-way into the front near the lock mechanism, a crowbar can't. And the fact that they're free-floating make them much more difficult to pry open: you can't put your weight against a a large screwdriver like you could with a locked glove compartment; you have to hold and stabilize the little vault with one hand while trying to do enough screwdriver damage with the other hand. And the ability to do even that is limited by the way the vault is secured on its steel cable, because it's likely to mean the vault has a limited range of movement and can be awkward to work on. In fact, the best way to steal one of these is have a good set of bolt cutters and snip that cable.

Given several minutes to work on it undisturbed, I have no doubt that opening one of my little COM vaults wouldn't be a problem. So if the whole car is stolen, or the connecting cable cut, whatever is inside the vault will be gone. But if a thief decides to smash a window or pop a lock to open a door, his internal timer probably wants him outta there in less than 60 seconds.

The COM-type gun vaults aren't prevention, but deterrents...and I think they work reasonably well for that.

A lot of vehicles don't have trunks, just one, big cabin area that may have some locking compartments. In my SUV, the glove compartment is the only lockable stowage area in the vehicle, and I know it would only take one insert-and-press with a hefty screwdriver to pop that open. I have two COM vaults in my SUV: one underneath the driver's seat and cabled to its mounting rail, and another sitting in the between-seat console and cabled to the passenger seat mounting rail. I often choose to carry a primary and a BUG, so I have a spot for both.

An aside, a couple of weeks ago I stopped into a Kroger's in one of those larger strip-centers anchored by the grocery store. I always try to scan pretty actively in parking lots, and I spotted a guy--not wearing typical Kroger garb--collecting shopping carts and wheeling them to a central spot in the lot that didn't make sense: it wasn't in line with any of the ramped cutaways on the curb in front of the store, and it was away from any of the normal "return your cart here" racks.

I was between my SUV and another, so I decided to lean casually against mine and watch. The guy was ranging pretty far to collect carts, and it instantly became obvious that, as he walked in between parked vehicles, he was looking inside almost every one.

I moved around to the rear of my SUV and leaned there, thumbs in pockets, openly watching him. He wheeled a cart to his growing stable, then walked off toward Highway 6, turned the corner around the strip center, and I assume just kept walking. I was only in the store to pick up a few things, so was back out in five minutes. I sat in the SUV for a while, watching for the helpful cart guy, but he was nowhere to be found.

There was no way, as a non-LEO, I was going to confront him and ask him what he was doing, but I also wasn't going to ignore obvious signals of a potential thief scoping out cars for a quick hit. Petty criminals don't want to be "made." This one, if I guessed his purpose correctly, may have simply moved on to find greener pastures. But the moral of the story is that situational awareness can benefit not only you, but also your neighbors. If he got the same silent treatment of being "made" and watched at every parking lot he tried, he might decide that quick hits on people's cars and property was not a good idea, after all.