Friday, March 20, 2009

Safe Deposit Boxes

Someone asked me about safe storage of a firearm. As in VERY safe. As in inside a safe deposit box at a bank.

Sure, you'd need a few days lead time to prep for an emergency. Sometime emergencies give you that much warning. If you saw Katrina coming, you could go to your bank and collect your roscoe. And it is certainly safe from home burglars and the risk of a toddler getting his mitts on your gun unsupervised are nil. No good for home invasion, naturally. But your strung out drug dealing brother in law can't get to it to pawn either since he's probably out of jail for a few months. That type of storage for all my guns is not for me since all my brother in laws are serving long stretches in the pokey. Maybe I'd put one of mine in a safe deposit box. I can't put ALL.

But are you allowed to?

Well, if you don't ask the bank's permission, they'd probably never know that you have more than a deed, coin collection, and birth certificate. And I wouldn't ask them. Why expose yourself to hoplophobes. I WOULD read the leasing agreement for the box. If the box doesn't say no firearms, go ahead and store one in there. Unloaded. Most lease agreements will probably say 'no explosives'. So, don't keep a box of ammo with your piece.

If the lease says no guns, well... don't rent a box from that bank.

2 comments:

Frozen said...

The only issue might be the legality of transporting a weapon to the bank and state laws regarding weapons being in a bank at all (since some states have clauses like that in their books)...

Anonymous said...

I used to work at a bank, and this came up a couple of times. We had no problems with firearms. But remember, you are walking into a bank, so probably not a good idea to be obviously carrying a gun; a discrete case is a must. You are right on the ammunition, pretty much a no go there. This was in a local bank in a pretty small town, so hoplophobia was not much of an issue.