Don't get me wrong....
I still think gun safes are a good idea for a few reasons:
A) There is almost no chance that some crook breaking into your house, will have the ability to open your safe. If they know enough to open a decent gunsafe (In any reasonable amount of time), they know enough to open the safe in the jewelry store down the street, and that's probably the juicier target. And when I said I could do it in 5 minutes, thats using tools that the average burglar doesn't possess. While the "brute force" approach into it IS possible, but will take a VERY long time with any reasonably good safe...unlikely to stick around that long (although we often saw these kinds of attacks when I was in the business, some successful, most not. Virtually all were in businesses, not homes). We NEVER saw a true professional safe cracker in action. While its also possible to "manipulate" the lock (as seen on TV!) this is a very difficult skill to learn (I never did, really), and depending on the "slop" in the lock can take a few minutes up to several hours. The person I worked for (literally) wrote the book (Yes, they actually teach this stuff) on manipulation, and I saw him spend several hours opening a coupla safes, although I also saw him open 6 of one particular kind (old Mosler money chest) in about 45 minutes, total. But, on average its probably a coupla hours. (and no, you don't use a stethoscope!)
P.S. punching the lock only works on some fire safes, that were not really made for security. Virtually all newer/better safes have "relocking devices" that lock the bolts up if the lock is punched, or even damaged in certain ways. The methods I would use require accuracy to within about 1/32" or risk setting off the relockers.
B) Safety...shouldn't need elaboration
Locks: Yes, the S&G mechanical lock is the best IMO...You'll probably never wear one out in your lifetime. The basic mechanism has been around for many, many years, and is well proven, and as mentioned is used on many, many safes. The same, or a slightly better S&G lock is also used on Bank vaults and high-end jewelers safes! The locking dials only prevent manipulation, which as I mentioned, most people could never do, and they are a very simple lock that can be picked easily anyway. In short, unnecessary.
Bolt it down: this is important...as mentioned, we often saw the crooks take the safe completely off the premises...Then they could open it at their leisure. We had one guy hit a car dealership...He hotwired a towtruck, extended the boom, backed it through the front window (Safe was in showroom, so it was visible to LEOs patrolling from the street), and lifted a 3000 lb. money chest and took off with it swinging behind the truck. (IIRC he got about 300 yards, before being stopped by LEOs reponding to alarm set off when he broke the window.) I could tell you dumb crook/safe stories for hours.
But, in short, successful safe openings are few and far between. All the better gun safes I see on the market would stop 99.9999% of crooks.
Not to ramble on too much, but we installed several used bank vaults for guys that had large and valuable gun collections. Cinder block walls, etc.
