Gun Safes Buying Guide - Must Watch Before Buying Safe. Part 2. Interior

In the second part of our educational videos, we focus on Gun Safe Interior differences. Do yourself a favor and educate yourself before buying a safe.

James Stoddard – Founder of Summit Safe is very knowledgeable person when it comes to Gun Safes. In this video he explains the key features of gun safe interior to look for when purchasing your next safe.

The Two Biggest Mistakes People Make When Buying a Gun Safe

Hi, I'm James Stoddard with Summit Safes. This is the second in our series of educational videos that we want to do to help people make a good decision when buying a safe. I've been in the safe business for 28 years.

Buying Too Small

The two things that I found that people regret after they buy a safe, the first one is that they buy too small. After they get it, they wish they had bought bigger.

Buying the Wrong Interior Style

The second one is that they're unhappy with the interior that they got. That's what we're going to talk about today, is the different interior styles that are available and which one might work best for you for the last 30 years, most safes have used gun racks that look very much like this. They're either a sportsman style rack that has rolls of guns. They're a horseshoe shaped rack or a Ushaped rack. Many manufacturers call that an easy access rack. And then this is a hybrid rack where you've got a ushape with a row of guns behind it.

The Different Types of Gun Safe Interiors and Their Pros and Cons

Sportsman Style Gun Rack

This safe has a sportsman style gun rack. It also has a door kit where you can put pistols on the door. The strength of a sportsman style rack is you can put quite a few guns in there. You can also access this front row very easily. The downside is that it's hard to access the guns that are not on the front row. You have to pull quite a few guns out to get to one that's on the very back row. Another downside to this gun rack is that these front guns oftentimes will be hit when you close the door. So you've gotta be careful when you close the door that they don't get pushed in and tip out when the door opens.

Easy Access or Horseshoe Style Gun Rack

The safe we're going to look at now has an easy access gun rack or this horseshoe style gun rack. This is probably the most popular gun style rack on the market today. People buy it thinking that they can get to each gun without moving the gun in front of it like they would have to. With a sportsman style where the guns are in rows in none of the gun rack styles will they hold as many guns as the manufacturers claim they will. This gun rack claims that they'll hold 11 guns. This back row is really not usable. I've got five guns in here and that's about as many as you can get in there. And then if you'll notice, it's really not as easy access as, as you might think, in order for the scopes to clear and the guns to be learned so that you can acc or so that they don't tip out. You've got to interlace the gun stalks and really the only rack that you, or only gun you can get to is the front one, and then you have to take each gun out to get to the back one.

Door Kit Gun Rack

Anyway, Browning Pro steel safes have probably been the most innovative when it comes to interior design. One of the things that they've done is they took a sportsman style gun rack and cut the front row off and mounted it on the door. Many people will think that that adds to gun capacity, but the room has to come from somewhere. The inside won't hold as many guns but you will get some on the door. This type of gun rack gives you extremely easy access to the guns, but there are a couple of things to be aware of.

First, the guns are a little rattly in this gun rack. And secondly, the gun butts poke out a little bit and you've gotta be careful that you don't put the gun inside to where it'll hit and possibly tip it over when you close the door.

Modular Gun Rack

One of the other things that people like about the Browning Pro steel safes is how modular they are. They've got jewelry drawers, they've got document trays. The shelves will move up and down. They'll move side to side. You can put small short guns here. You can make a handgun rack. So they're very versatile. And people like that modularity.

The Best Gun Safe for Non-Gun Owners

Many of the people we sell safes to don't have any guns, and we've got safes for that kind of a customer as well. Consider this small one down here. This is what most people have in mind when they think of a non gun safe. But something to keep in mind is it's very awkward to get down and run your combination. It's even more awkward to get inside the safe, so this may not be the best option. We have tall standup safes that are just all shelves. It's easy to run your combination because it's at eye level. You can put lots of things in there. Some of them don't take any more floor space than the short one does, and the cost is not a lot more.

The Most Innovative Gun Safe Interior on the Market

The Slider Interior for Rifles and Shotguns

I'm gonna have a hard time hiding my bias on this interior.This is the most exciting development that I've seen in gun safes in the 28 years that I've been selling them. This is a slider interior, now available in the summit safes. This slider will hold 200 pounds. You can get up to 11 guns on it.

You can access any gun, even this back without moving a gun to get to it. They hold the gun solidly and you just push in and out. There are two sized clips, one for shotguns and one for rifle barrels. But this is a great interior. The people that have used this like it better than any other interior.

The Slider Interior for Pistols and Files

The sliders in the Summit Safes are not just for rifles and shotguns. They can be used for a lot of other things. We've got these holes and shelf clips so that we can put other rails and shelves in there so they can be set up for pistols. We can have up to four levels of pistols for 44 handguns. We can put files in there so that you've got a file rated file cabinet.

Thank you for watching this video. I hope it helps you in your decision of what's safe to purchase. Please go to our website to see other videos www.summitsafe.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel if you'd like to have any other subjects covered. Post those subjects in the comment section and we'll try to cover them in a future video.

James Stoddard gun safe video guides:


Written by

Kirillo Byelin
General Manager at The Safe Keeper Las Vegas
Security Safe Expert
Kirillo Byelin