The Best Place to Keep Your Gun

by Home Defense Gun Staffer Bob

Where’s the best place to keep your gun?

For many years of my misspent youth I worked as a bounty hunter. A gig like tracking down and arresting bond jumpers is a wonderfully fun activity for a guy in his twenties, but in addition to offering entertainment it teaches you a few things you’ll never forget. Bounty hunters are essentially kidnappers who operate with the consent of the court. They act a little like criminals, look like criminals and, after an eighteen hour stakeout, they smell like criminals.

A tried and true method for grabbing a bond jumper is to bust into their house, really fast, before anyone even has time to drop their beer and cuff the dude. If properly executed nobody gets hurt, except for maybe the door, and the whole thing is over before the fugitive or their friends even knows what happened. Over the years I got rather good at executing this maneuver along with the fellows I worked with and I’m proud to say that by the time we closed up shop there was darn little excitement left in the operation. We had things rehearsed enough to make the whole thing run like clockwork. One thing all this double-quick breaking and entering taught me is that it is almost impossible to get to a gun before the intruder gets to you. Heck, I’m still around to write this, so obviously not too many of the bad guys made it to their weapon.

Sure, no two people are the same. Some of the guys I went after didn’t exactly have eyes in the back of their head. One fellow I recall was passed out right next to his hunting rifle but was so far in the bag that I handcuffed him and then had to shake him awake. Sometimes the fugitive would get a little farther along in defending himself due to bad planning on our part — an extra door in the way we didn’t know about, or just plain bad luck — but by and large they never had a chance. This has led me to believe that the only proper location for a self-defense handgun is on your hip, ready to go.

Now you might be thinking that there is a big difference between the behavior or a trained crew of bounty hunters and some junkie who’s breaking it to take the stereo. The junkie isn’t going to move as quickly or surely, so you’ll have more time with a bad guy. I’d like to tell you that’s so, I hope it is so, but we got the hang of our jobs pretty quick without any real training aside from some tips from the grumpy old Green Beret who hired us, and we weren’t exactly physical supermen. In a lot of instances, when the time to start kicking doors rolled around we had all been awake for a couple of days living on nothing but coffee and gas station food. Mentally, we weren’t in the best place, kind of like a junkie breaking into a house. I’d like to request that if anyone reading this ever finds themselves being arrested by a bounty hunter, please be nice. The person handcuffing you has probably been awake a long, long, long time and they are in no mood.

I think that most people simply do not realize how quickly something like a home invasion occurs. One second you’re drinking coffee and the next the whole world turns upside down. In reality, from the time the door is kicked in you do not have a minute, 30 seconds, or ten seconds to react. In the best case scenario you start shooting before the door stops opening, and having your gun on you is the only way that’s really feasible.

There are countless products on the market these days for gun storage that offer quick access. If you own one of these outfits and like it, maybe it is a workable option for you in your particular home, but you really need to test it to be sure. Whatever you’re going with instead of wearing your gun has to be accessible quickly — very quick — regardless of which door the bad guys come from and it has to be foolproof. When your adrenaline is pumping, your heart is beating a mile a minute and you can’t remember your own name, that’s no time for codes or combinations.

I know that it’s a pain in the neck to wear a gun all day. Even the best holster rig gets annoying after a while. Gun grips scuff furniture, gun oil stains clothes and guns ride up while you’re sitting in the recliner, but in a lot of instances it’s the only real option. If you have a legitimate concern, if you think you might need your gun in an instant, the holster is the best gun storage option. You might need to switch to a smaller, easier-to-conceal and carry gun. You might need a new, more user-friendly holster, but it’s worth it if you have the gun when you need it. At home concealed carry might seem a little paranoid. It might even make you feel a little silly, but if it is the only real option to gain the added level of security that you bought a gun for in the first place it’s well worth considering.

Do you wear in the house? Let us know in the comments.

 

Photo credit – Sandra1983