Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
One of the most effective home defensive weapons you can own, without question, is a gun. A gun is what will equalize you to your invader (or perhaps give you an advantage) and should always be your primary choice for a home defense weapon.
That being said, owning a gun for home defense still comes with a large amount of responsibility. Two things need to be accomplished when storing a gun in your home:
1. The Gun Must Be Kept Hidden and Secure
2. The Gun Must Be Easily Accessible
The reason why your home defense gun(s) need to be kept hidden is so that children or guests can’t find them when they visit your home, and also so burglars can’t find them should you have a home intrusion when you aren’t there.
At the same time, your guns also need to be kept easily accessible so you can get to them quickly in the event of a life-or-death emergency.
If you’re at a loss for ideas of places where your guns can be both properly hidden and readily available, you’ve come to the right place. Here are eleven places to hide your guns where nobody will see them:
1. Empty Food Box
Take an empty food box in your pantry and place a gun in it (such as a cereal box). This is a very creative place to hide your gun, and it’s easily accessible from your kitchen, but you also run the risk of a child or guest rummaging through the pantry and perhaps finding it on accident.
2. Pottery
So long as you have any pottery pieces that are large enough to hold a handgun, you can very easily stuff one in there. Be sure to wrap the gun in a towel before placing it into the pottery, so it will still remain hidden if anybody looks inside out of curiosity.
3. Electrical Outlet
Or perhaps more appropriately, a fake electrical outlet. Fake electrical outlets can be purchased online and are one of the most creative places to hide a gun. While it is true that some burglars may search the electrical outlets in your home for hidden valuables, the chances of them choosing the specific outlet where you’ve hidden your gun are pretty low.
4. Under The Floors
Cut into your wooden floors so you are able to lift up a piece. You can then stash a gun in there for hiding. Be strategic about where you make the cut; underneath or right next to a table or couch would probably be the best option. Speaking of couches…
5. Underneath Your Couch
Most couches have fabric underneath them. Simply cut away this fabric to store your weapon underneath it. The beauty about using your couch for storing guns, unlike a chair, is that you can store long guns like rifles or shotguns.
6. Your Closet
Really, your closet? Isn’t this the most obvious place for people to store their guns? Yes it is, but you can still be intuitive about how you hide your firearms in your closet. For example, you can hide it above the door frame on the inside of the closet, where it will be easy for you to reach but also not where most people will think to look.
7. Air Vents
The concept here is very similar to using the fake electrical outlets: you can either use fake air vents, or you can use real air vents if you want to. The best aspect about hiding a gun in an air vent is that children won’t think to look for anything there, but the biggest negative is that experienced burglars might think to look there. The average burglar, however, probably won’t think of it.
8. A Book
An old gun hiding trick is to hide it in a book designed for concealing weapons: the inside of the book is carved out with enough space to store a handgun. The best kind of book to use for this concealment method will be a hardback rather than a paperback. Or you can buy a book gun safe online. If you do opt for this method, be sure that the book is among several other books (such as on a bookshelf), rather than resting on its own where someone may curiously pick it up.
9. Picture Frame
Just as how there are many ‘books’ designed for concealing handguns, so there are picture frames designed for the same purpose. You may initially think this is counterintuitive because pictures are often a target for burglars to steal, but you can offset this by selecting a rather ordinary or drab-looking photo/painting to put in the frame so no burglar will be compelled to take it.
10. Cabinets
It’s possible to hide a gun in kitchen cabinets, but not right next to your food and kitchen supplies. Instead, put it on the top shelf between two corner cabinets below the counter in that little space that usually doesn’t get used. You could also strap a gun to the underside of the counter where it can’t be seen and where you can only get to it if you open a floor cabinet and reach inside.
11. On Your Person
Last but certainly not least, hide your gun in the place where it’s the most easily accessible: you! It may certainly not seem appealing to have to lug your gun on your person while you’re in your own home, but a smaller gun (such as a pocket .380) will still be very lightweight and hardly noticeable.
Conclusion
Obviously, not all of these places for hiding your gun are equal. Some are going to be more accessible or keep the gun more hidden than others. But if you have multiple home defense guns, then you need to have a variety of ways to hide those guns, which is why you will want to use more than just one of the hiding methods that we have covered.
If you’re interested in hiding more than just guns, be sure to check out these 17 hiding places for valuables.
Need better ideas for something over 3’ long.
To conceal gun ownership, tell any snoopy person that you took your gun on a boat trip and the gun sadly fell out of your bag and it fell overboard. The ocean midway to Catalina is five miles deep.
No more gun.
As this article points out, disguise is the best concealment. Cereal boxes, hollowed out books and pictures are mentioned. But the sky’s the limit in terms of what you use and where. Get creative!
One word about safes. Although they certainly have their place in securing firearms, a safe is nothing more than buying time. A thief with time and/or means can defeat them. Smaller safes can literally be picked up and removed for cracking at a different location. Bigger ones can also have weak points and will not always manage to withstand a determined professional. And they stand out like a sore thumb.
What excellent ideas! I’m glad Info on the net is so secure – they’ll never think of all these methods, especially the stump one!
The most genius things I ever saw…a guy cut down a large tree and left a stump about 2 feet high…he carved out the inside of the stump big enough for a large ammo can…then he cut a section of the tree off so it was about 10 inches high..he set it on top of the stump with a interior hinge…so here was this stump sticking out of the ground in the woods and he had about 500 rounds of ammo in the stump…how genius was that….
Bottom of a trash can (be sure to use plastic bag in there above the weapons and such).
Oh and have some NASTY trash too lol
Diaper pail.
Unlikely someone would want to reach their hand in a nasty diaper pail.
we use these big magnets and attach them under our end tables in the living room, gun and full clip sit nicely within easy reach
Yep! The gun magnet is a great invention! It can be used for other defensive weapons like knives or axes or machetes too. Especially great under a desk.
I had several guns hidden in a concealed step under my stairs of my log cabin. When my husband passed away suddenly from an accident his brothers and their girlfriends searched the cabin while I was at a friends recooping. They never found them and believe me they went through the cabin with a fine tooth comb because they knew we had them.
they also never found the one hidden knee deep underground in a metal ammo can. I was told they brought in a metal detector to find it.
That’s horrible! I’m sorry for your loss and very happy they found nothing! May want to think about booby traps 😀. I’m envisioning a Home Alone trap.
Thank God they didn’t find them; and wow, what a great bunch of family your hubby had. Geez, some people. And sorry for your loss.
Sorry about your in-laws being rotten, but glad you got to keep your stuff.
We have a broken dishwasher,so when we leave the house we put some guns in it and take some with us.
My god! A broken dishwasher?!? How on earth do you clean your dishes?
(says every liberal city-dweller)
I’m thinking seriosly how far will Hiden Biden want to go? There’s a lot of guns in this country owned privately. Yes, I’m thinking a 6 ” Water pipe and caps planted in a post hole. Send me an email if anyone else has this idea. Thanks, Sam
When you need to hide your guns is PRECISELY the moment when they need to come OUT. Get to work!
No one has mentioned the ammo! If you have large quantities and don’t hide them, then they will assume you still have that gun! Plus ours are in a large safe as we have quite a few weapons! Not sure we have enough hiding places since we live in a log cabin! Help!
Look for a Harbor Freight Store or go on line and get some ammo cans…you can line the can with newspaper…spray a little gun oil on the paper…then put your handguns in them..you can then hide them in the garage…or bury them…I also know a guy that buried several ammo cans of ammo in his back yard…then drove several small pieces of re-rod (used when pouring cement) around the yard …he did that in the event someone had a metal detector…they would finally give up looking with all the metal around the area…but metal ammo cans are the absolute best…they are waterproof..and to really seal them up wrap them in a heavy trash bag…
hide a gun in your pooper
I worry that the gummint knows most of us with legal guns. If (when?) they come to confiscate them and we refuse, they could just take metal detectors to find the concealed firearms. So perhaps one needs to be particularly creative in the department of fabrication and lying (“I sold my guns at a gun show”) as well as clever at concealment. That latter would necessarily involve placement behind other, clearly metal structures or firmly emplaced items which hopefully would deflect attention due to their obvious triggering of the metal detector.
That’s a good idea!
I’m thinking metal detectors wouldn’t be very effective inside a house. There is a lot of metal in the walls. Nails,screw guards, plates wiring, and wiring components, boxes ect. Just my thoughts.
One of the most ingenious hiding spots I’ve heard of is inside one of your closet doors. If the doors are like most, being made of Luan sheets with a hollow core, a wedge shaped cut out of the top frame makes a removable insert. Drill a small finger hole for lifting the “plug” out. Attach a small chain, string or wire to the insert with the other end attached to your firearm (works best with pistols). Who checks the inside of a closet door? To retrieve the item simply reach to the top of the door, stick you finger in the hole and lift out the item. If the item fits loosely in the door be sure to wrap it in something so it’s secure and doesn’t act like the clapper of a bell.
Good article!
There are other locations that can be used for firearms that you may want to conceal, but that do not require quick access (thinking of FEMA and martial law). For example, the underside of your washing machine or clothes dryer. In both cases, they can be easily shifted and tilted. Because these appliances are constructed with metal, there is very little likelihood that a metal detector would be able to locate a hidden firearm that is stored inside the frame of either appliance.
Another location that is useful for concealing firearms and ammunition is underneath your cement patio. Granted this requires some digging and subtle restoration of your landscape. Retrieval is not quick, but if you have the necessity of hiding a cache of firearms and ammo, this is a viable method. The cement
patio floor protects the cache from moisture, but you still need to seal the items in waterproof containers.
Excellent suggestions ! Appreciate it.