Gun-safe key scare

[Tower75]

Ok, boys and girls. Question for you.

I recently had a "Oh, [beep]" moment. I was at work and realised that I didn't have my keys on me. My keys contain everything - front door key, hallway door key, parents' house, GUN SAFE KEYS!!

Needless to say I kacked myself.

It's ok, they were at home.

Now this lead me to thinking. What do you guys do? We're meant to always have our keys on us, or at least that's what my FLO told me. Now if the keys are always on us, and we loose them, we have no choice but to saw through the safe or call a locksmith. In either case this would mean that your firearms are no longer secure.

Another option would be to keep the spare-keys somewhere safe, but this defeats the police's rule of only you having access to your keys, as if the spares are not on you, then you are not in control of your gun safe, technically.

Am I over thinking this?

[ovenpaa]

I keep my keys in an ammunition safe with an electronic key pad, so I need to know the code to open the safe to get to the keys to open the gun safes. The FEO seemed quite happy with this arrangement and it saves dragging a large bunch of keys everywhere.

If the safe key pad fails then I need to use a key to override it. This key is hidden securely and requires a screwdriver and some muscle to recover. That is good enough in my opinion.

[Steve]

One set of keys to my safes are like you on my main bunch with car,house,shed,gate etc etc so i always know where they are.The spare set of gun safe keys are hidden in my home.

Im not too concerned though because if someone really wanted my guns they'd simply use an angle grinder to get access,but they'd have to get past normal household security (UPVC windows/doors) plus two large dogs.

[20series]

I keep my keys in an ammunition safe with an electronic key pad, so I need to know the code to open the safe to get to the keys to open the gun safes. The FEO seemed quite happy with this arrangement and it saves dragging a large bunch of keys everywhere.

If the safe key pad fails then I need to use a key to override it. This key is hidden securely and requires a screwdriver and some muscle to recover. That is good enough in my opinion.

I do exactly the same

Alan

[Mike357]

My FEO made it quite clear that the keys should be stored so that nobody else has access to them. That rules out keeping them with car or house keys in my opinion.

I have one set hidden close to hand and another set stashed at the opposite end of the house.

I'll be doing what Ovenpaa does as soon as I have an ammo safe.

[Tower75]

My FEO made it quite clear that the keys should be stored so that nobody else has access to them.

It's weird how we all get told different things, isn't it? :cool2:

[ovenpaa]

We both have access to the same cabinets, firearms and ammunition in our house and each know all of the PIN codes and then keep duplicate keys in our own safes. It gets confusing...

[kennyc]

I use one of these to keep my main set of keys, the others are in an ammo safe, this way I know where the keys are, but there is no chance that anyone else can access them without resorting to force (assuming they can find them) to my mind this means that I cannot leave them lying around, and I can't be robbed of them while asleep or by being mugged.

[Porcupine]

I was told not to keep my keys on me and to hide them somewhere at home, but I do keep one set on me and another set in my safe deposit box.

All the specifics you may get told are just advice. The only thing in law is that you must keep your guns reasonably secure from unlawful access, and in case law I believe there was a case where a man had given his keys to his wife for safekeeping and this was ruled to fall foul of the law since she had unlawful access to them on account of that.

I wouldn't worry about losing your keys though. Someone finding (or stealing) your keys when out and about would have to know where you lived for them to be of any use which they wouldn't unless it was a planned, sophisticated job which is unlikely. Call a locksmith and get the lock on your cabinet changed if possible. If not, leave it locked until a new cabinet arrives, or take your guns to an RFD until it arrives, or just don't worry about it and leave them under the bed or what not. My FEO told me that it was ok to leave guns unlocked if I took them on holiday or away with work (I travel) but it would be preferable to use a cable lock. If he thinks unlocked entirely for a few days is fine, nobody is going to mind yours being unlocked on account of lost keys - even if they found out which they're not going to.

[Watcher]

I have two sets and hide them around the house. As an added security measure I forget where I've hidden them...