What To Look For When Choosing A Gun Cabinet

Once you have a firearm - whether it is a shotgun, rifle or pistol, sooner or later you are going to be thinking about a place to put them. Many options for the storage of guns exist. Some people put them in soft shell containers underneath the bed; others put them in the loft space.

An option that exists for the safe keeping of your guns and the added benefit of a potentially beautiful piece of furniture is a gun cabinet. These cabinets are used to store one or more guns, normally on display.

Some of the reasons why you would want a gun cabinet instead of leaving them lying around are the added security of having your guns under lock and key. As a rule of thumb, cabinets have at least one lock, and normally multiple locks at different points along the door structure (think of your front door with its various locks to get an idea). In this day and age, people are increasingly aware that security of guns from minors, people not trained in the use of ballistic weapons and criminals, is paramount. The last thing you would want to happen is to have one of your weapons misused by somebody else with potentially hazardous consequences.

Another reason to have a gun cabinet is to keep all of your weapon specific and related equipment to hand. Ammunition, cleaning supplies, holsters and bandoleers can all be kept in one place (normally compartmentalized), within easy reach. No more forgetting where that box of shotgun cartridges went.

On a lot of people's lists for getting a cabinet is the fact that it is a proper piece of furniture in its own right - something to display a collection of guns (it is not uncommon to have six rifles or more on display) in a sympathetic setting, whilst being relatively secure.

As you can imagine, there are as many different sizes and shapes of a gun cabinet as there are days in the year. Different capacity cabinets, different types of construction (wood - both hard and soft, metal, composite etc), and certainly, different price brackets.

On the subject of price, if you think of your purchase as a major piece of furniture - designed to do a job whilst looking stylish, then you will not go far wrong. Remember that this item will remain in use and probably in view for many years to come.

Some issues to consider when deciding whether a firearms cabinet is for you:

• Do you wish to display your firearms for other people to see? Do you have a suitable area to put it so that it does not look out of place?
  
• Do you have a safe place to put the keys for the door locks (There is no point in having locks if a key for them can be found easily by someone else)?
  
• What is your budget?
  
• Lastly, do you wish to purchase more guns in the future? If so, then think about getting spare capacity.

In the end, the decision is going to be yours entirely. Some tried and tested advice is to do plenty of research, look at as many pictures as possible to get a feel for what you want and certainly measure to make sure your new piece of furniture will fit!

Photo Credit: bearhunter92307(Flickr)