Gun storage at home

[nicholas-c]

Hey guys, before I moved into my own place I kept my gun with my mate who left it in his car but now I live away from my mum and have my own place where do I keep my gun? I thought about mounting it on the wall but I live in a terrace house straight on a street so if I open my blinds I imagine the police will be round very fast for showing my collection to the public, I have a hard case and could store it under my bed but... That's not very nice?

 

Where do you keep your guns?

[Ian_Gere]

Sabine (see below) is often hanging above my fireplace, or, like now, when she's poorly, lying around my lounge in some degree of disassembly. Still, I live in a flat that is the top of a pretty large house, so the only people who could see in are the neighbours, either on the other side of the road, whose house is set back on a huge rise and facing at about 30 degrees away from our side (not very likely IMO), or next door if I leave the blinds open on my side window. The thing is I very rarely open those blinds anyway, specifically because the house is let unfurnished to a constant stream of students and, for some unknown reason, the inhabitants of the 2 rooms which have windows facing directly into my lounge never yet have bothered to buy any curtains or blinds themselves. One put some cardboard over most of the window one year, but I've leant out to throw something at urban foxes before and been confronted with what some people would, no doubt, pay good money to watch online. I'm more of a doer than a watcher by nature, but there's also the embarrassment (which is admittedly not that powerful since I'm so laid back I'm almost upside down), and then there's the very real fear of major embarrassment if they should think I was some kind of peeping tom.

 

Agnes, my L1A1 SLR, lives in my wardrobe. Wilf, my shorty shottie, hangs by his sling on the side of a mirror that is supposed to be a temporary feature of my lounge, for the odd times I need to bother about my appearance, but through laziness has taken root near my TV. Emily, my modded mini MP5 pistol, hangs in a holster in the wardrobe too, or on the back of my bathroom door and my Palco Firepower USP, which doesn't yet have a formal name, is in a soft-ish case with some CO2 cartridges and speed-loaders in one of my bookcases in the lounge.

 

In the unlikely event that the old bill come round, I will simply yell at them out of the window, "Calm down! It's a fcuking airsoft gun! Reign your neck in and I'll come down and let you see my Airsoft Site Membership."

 

I realise that many of you, perhaps those who have served in HM Forces, or a Constabulary, more than others, may feel doubtful and think that either I wouldn't really do that, or that, if I did, things would quickly go a bit pear shaped for me. I assure you that I have had firearms pointed at me by the police before and also by criminals and at least one complete nutcase. Naturally, the first time it happened it was all I could do to stay focussed on what was being said while not losing control of my bladder.

 

By the time the nutcase actually jammed a full length double barrelled shotgun, which he'd been at pains to show me he was loading moments before, in my face, I knew the crack: I am helpless to prevent my instant death unless, 1) some very unlikely event happens which somehow allows me to get right up close to my antagonist before s/he can pull the trigger; or 2) I can say something in a way that takes control of the situation, either covertly by manipulation, or overtly by assertiveness. Therefore I may as well ignore the threat, because there's nothing other than keeping my head together that will save me.

 

Now, certainly there are nutcases in the police force, but generally speaking, whilst they are trained to dominate a situation by intimidation, and to do so they often project a cavalier attitude to the law, behind their training they are still British people who have a job, financial commitments reliant upon that job, and quite likely emotional attachments which are also partly conditional upon those financial commitments. The way to handle them is assertively. You must know at least the gist of the law regarding arrest, entry into a property without a warrant, what constitutes "threatening behaviour" as opposed to "a serious arrestable offence", and what defines "resisting arrest".

 

In order to completely ignore their intimidation, a good mental focus is that this is not the 70's: they are highly unlikely to do anything noisy without at least one witness who may well video the event on his/her phone and post it to You Tube or their Face Book before they can grab the phone, if they are even aware of being recorded, and they are aware of this far more acutely than you are, since they have so much to lose as a potential consequence. You must act unconcerned by them as a threat. You are in control. In fact, if you have done nothing wrong, you very much are in control. Unless they have reasonable grounds to suspect that you are committing a serious arrestable offence in your house at that very moment and the only way to stop you would be to enter your home without a warrant, they cannot come in, regardless of what they say or point at you. If you tell them you are coming to the door and do so immediately, that's the end of that.

 

Naturally you must keep your empty, open hands in plain sight, but, regardless of what they may shout at you, down by your sides, but out at angles away from any pockets, where they cannot be construed as threatening. You must also remain completely within your house. You then ask them, in a chatty everyday manner, over or between anything they may say, what they are there for and keep doing so until one of them answers you. That person is the one you talk to from now on; even if the one right in front of you interrupts or cross questions you. You are required to cooperate with the police in their investigations and you are doing so, "cooperate" does not mean "obey unconditionally".

 

If the police do turn up to your place mob handed without a warrant, you are definitely not going to get away without letting at least one of them in, unless you are also a team and "no warrant; no ingress" really means "come'n'ave a go if yer fink yer 'ard enough!" and they're not so confident about the outcome. After that use of manpower whoever is in charge really wants to justify the operation. If you won't let them in without a warrant and barging in seems like a bad idea because of potential witnesses, they'll either threaten you, your friends, or your family* with a nicking for something else, or they'll leave a few sitting there to nick you if you run, while the rest go and get one.

 

You just have to talk calmly with 'your' designated copper and tell him/her that you understand they've got a job to do but you haven't done anything wrong so you don't want a load of them crashing through your place freaking you out, but if s/he wants to come in and check you out, that's fine, "Bring one of your mates too, if you like; I realise you can't know I'm not a nutter yet," and laugh. In your willingness to be thought of as cooperative, friendly even, beware of losing control of the situation by allowing your designated copper to give you instructions which you obey. No matter how reasonable they may sound, you are not required to do anything other than cooperate with enquiries, which you are doing by standing there, in your house, offering no threat, answering any questions put to you by your copper. If this approach starts to get untenable, either because too many of them shout at you to get a word in edgeways, or more than one of them question to you in a reasonable manner, you need to tell your copper that you're scared of them. You'll not be lying, you will be scared. Tell that person, "Just you. I can't deal with all of you at once while I'm this frightened. I want to show you that everything is cool but, if you're all on at me, I can't think straight."

 

Of course that too is the truth. That is exactly why they do it. So you can't think. Then you're left with nothing but your fear of them and so you either have to run, fight, or obey them. The most important thing to remember is that "assertive" doesn't mean "hard", "tough", "Billy-big-spuds", or any other popular image of what, men in particular, behave like when they are "standing up for themselves". Nor does "I am afraid" mean "I am weak", "I'm your bitch", "I'm too cowardly to represent my best interests or defend myself", or any other popular image of what showing fear means about a person's courage. In fact it takes far more courage to tell the truth as you see it, including your feelings, and still remain focussed on what you need to happen as an outcome, and, as a separate consideration, what you want as a best case scenario.

 

If a person pointing a firearm clearly is a nutcase, in uniform or not, or you're not sure, take the opposite approach - make them believe they are in control. This does not mean obey them unconditionally and immediately. If you do that they will either consciously think you may be duplicitous, or unconsciously feel that something may not be quite right, and they will feel the need to demonstrate their power, to test that you really have given up. That's when you may well get a bit of a kicking, or, if they've been watching a lot of films where the hero/anti-hero says something cool before delivering a cruel blow/shot/etc, try to act out that pre-formed unconscious script of what being the winner entails and do something horrible to you.

 

In this situation you have to respond to each word and gesture (and notice I use "respond" not "react") compliantly with your body language and speech, but nevertheless maintain a demeanor of readiness. You bob as if about to crouch, move your arms, palms up, briefly outwards from your sides as if you're going to put your hands up, lean back away from the threat briefly and say, "Yeah, yeah.", as if you are about to obey. But all the time think wtf do they want? When you realise what it is, if it's something you are willing to give without a fight, you need to start your negotiation. Again because if you give it up too easily, they cannot help but be suspicious. You have to project "You have won for now, you are in control. However, don't upset this fragile status quo, because you are about to get what you want and who knows what might happen if you fcuk it up."

 

When I started this reply I had no intention of writing all this, I just found I couldn't say what I wanted to without covering the subject more fully, because to do so would have been irresponsible. Basically, if you have a valid defence to the VCR Act, you may own RIF's and, if somebody sees one in your house and freaks out, so long as you weren't displaying it in the window in a manner clearly intended to be noticed by those outside, you have done nothing wrong whatsoever and you are under no obligation to submit to armed police booting your door off and confiscating it. If you should ever find yourself having to deal with coppers whom you believe are about to break and enter your dwelling house, assault you, and burgle your dwelling house by stealing anything, which is exactly what forcing their way in through you to get at your property amounts to, if it is done without a warrant or reasonable suspicion that a serious arrestable offence is being committed inside, then you need to remember the magic words, the veritable "Close Sesame", which are "Tort of Trespass Against the Person". I'll leave that for a google adventure, because it can be misused much more readily than this info above can.

 

*If you have one or more children on the premises, they will threaten to arrest all of the adults and have any children taken into local authority care unless you let them do whatever they like. Bear in mind, they cannot arrest you while you are in your house and they are not unless they have a warrant to enter or bla bla, serious arrestable offence, bla, bla. Also remember that if there is nothing that can be reasonably construed as evidence of a crime inside, once they have their warrant, they may arrest one or two adults out of spite, but they will not involve child services because that creates a paper trail that will not go away.

 

OH SH..UGAR! PS: under no circumstances must you go to the door holding any RIF; not even say, "I'll go and get it so you can see." and make any move to do so. If it seems that just letting them see that it is an airsoft gun is going to get rid of them fastest, you'll have to invite first one, then "a mate" in and just lead them to it so they pick it up, not you. Bear in mind here that simply because you have given them permission to hold and inspect your property does not mean that they can take it anywhere else and they must put it down or give it to you as soon as you ask for it.

[M_P]

I've got a cupboard in the garage to keep mine in. Ian has listed some good stuff so give it half an hour or so and read his post

[Grounded_Pilot]

I've got a cupboard in the garage to keep mine in. Ian has listed some good stuff so give it half an hour or so and read his post

I just got washed over by a Tsunami of text.... :/ But it was a Tsunami of knowledge, rather than water. Shame I live in the 2nd driest county. Could use one!

 

I have a tool rack, mounted above my bed.

Took the girlfriend a while to sleep with them looming above her... I mean, a full metal G&P M4 would be an unwelcome visitor in the middle of the night.

 

While I do hang my guns on my wall, I keep a spring revolver under my pillow to scare the neighbour's cat away to stop it eating our cat food in the middle of the night!! haha!!

 

Damn "ninjas".

 

Right now, with my micro-business in airsoft repair, I have more guns in the room than I can fit... I can hold 3-4 rifles usually, but it becomes too crammed/dangerous once I am over 6!!

[joshcowin]

i have all 6 of mine in my clothes draw and my misses went in their for the first time yesterday and asked why theirs a 4 and a half foot sniper rifle in their,but now shes really interested and wants to get into it

[Richard65]

Having them on display through your window could attract the attention of burglars as well as the police which might be more of a concern.

[jcheeseright]

In my gun bag, under my bed. Saves having to explain anything ever, since no one ever sees them except when I'm skirmishing.

[Monty]

I keep my pistols in my drawer, sometimes one of them next to my bed in case someone decides to walk into my house at night (like that's ever going to happen.) and my rifles in my wardrobe.

[Airsoft-Ed]

I have a large wardrobe with 2 large compartments and 6 smaller ones.

 

1 large and 3 smaller ones are for clothes and the other large one and 3 smaller ones are for ALL of my airsoft kit.

 

The large section can fit around 10 guns in it, along with magazines, camo gear, chest rigs, ammo, gas, batteries etc etc.

 

The smaller drawers are used for storing upgrade bits and bobs, spare parts and tools and all the boxes the guns came in, as well as any other large packaging I need to keep for warranty purposes etc. I keep under my bed.

 

Ikea for the win lol.

 

I would like to wall mount my guns, but my walls are all made of plaster of paris or something, so if I nailed things into it, it'd just crumble away and ruin the wall =[

[Johnno]

Keep mine in locked Bags/Hard Cases out of sight.

You can get special fixings to hang stuff on Plasterboard Walls just have a look in Wilkos or B&Q as a very last resort LOL.

[joshcowin]

yeah their called rappel hooks,i can get you some if you want

[Airsoft-Ed]

Nah I'm good, as someone else mentioned above, I don't think the gf would appreciate guns hanging everywhere

[joshcowin]

true but guns are you gfs,you sleep with them more especially the l85

[bigshep]

guns in garage in a locked cupboard, bits and bobs in my Grandad's service trunk in my spare bedroom cupboard

[Gecko]

Did anybody happen to read the editorial in last months issue of Airsoft International? It got me thinking that whilst I store my kit on the top floor of the house in cupboard, perhaps I should take some more responsibility and by a gun case or cabinet? Who knows?

 

On a slightly more indulgent note, check out this youtube clip for the dream way to store your airsoft kit...check out these guys videos too as they make some decent stuff!

 

[Ian_Gere]

Ian has listed some good stuff so give it half an hour or so and read his post

I'm somewhat surprised, but pleased and reassured, that I didn't get a massive flaming for that post. You know, one person gets indignant and then everyone who has any unresolvable resentments bubbling away on their back burners wades in a-spleen-venting until there's nothing left but bile and a foul stench, leaving the original points dissolved or hidden in too much ick to be worth rescuing, and often as not one or more banned members...

 

I hope that everyone realised, and that any new readers will realise, that I have no intention of having, nor am I recommending that anyone else set out to have, a confrontation with the police over RIF's, it's just that it does bug me that there is often an air of over-caution and powerlessness whenever RIF's and the law get discussed. We are into a legal hobby/sport and, so long as we are responsible, in just the same way that somebody into playing rugby would realise that they'd be in trouble were they to attempt to have a game in the street, and somebody who likes making amateur porn would realise that closing the blinds is the best plan, we ought to be able to enjoy our own property in our own homes. Indeed we can, we just have to put to one side the years of conditioning we have received from TV and film crime dramas, where the police do whatever they like and always win in the end, and examine the real world, and I don't mean the infotainment world of the tabloid press and MSM news outlets, where one incident is conflated with a near certainty that it is a countrywide threat ffs!

 

Richard makes a good point about burglary, which is equally true of TV's, computers, sound systems, etc. I don't know what you lot do about the threat of burglary but I have reason to know that pro burglars are looking for relatively high value mass produced goods which can be sold quickly and have, to all intents and purposes, disappeared into the whole mass of similar ones the moment they are out of the burglars' possession, so airsoft guns would not be high on their list. Of course there is the possibility that they, or an opportunist burglar, may think that it is real steel. A pro would then wonder who you are to have a fcuking assault rifle on your wall, whereas a dick may imagine that he (and I'd bet you £50 it would be a 'he' rather than 'she') could be a real gangsta... and will soon get arrested and, once your gun has been evidence in his trial, you'll get it back.

 

I also have reason to know that the most effective protection against burglary is uncertainty about whether there is anybody in and awake. So for that reason and also to make pretty much all other concerns moot, we must, unfortunately, find ourselves condoning a style faux pas, maybe even a disaster, depending on the entire surroundings:

 

LACE CURTAINS!

 

Oh and edit to add: my guns lying around have been conversation pieces and my g/f knows what they are so she only complains when I ask her to allow Sabine to make a 3sum...

[Alexb111]

I just had a vision of someone breaking into a house, starting to nick the tv and seeing a sawn off shotgun or something mounted on the wall. Slowly turns around, move the tv carefully back where it was and runs away.

Would be an epic story if it ever happened

[TPI]

if i had a gun i'd still use a baseball bat... (Gotta love my mind lol)

[Ian_Gere]

if i had a gun i'd still use a baseball bat... (Gotta love my mind lol)

Nah, takes too much room to swing and also a moment to raise before swinging - a moment is all it takes for somebody to spring forward inside your reach with the bat and butt you in the face while both your hands are occupied so you can't do anything about it (trust me on this - I was asleep on a low futon when somebody trod on my foot advancing to swing a bat at me and I did exactly as I described, except that the way he was holding the bat put the handle between our foreheads and it splintered when my head connected - he still went down like a sack of excrement, although I had a massive egg shaped bruise come up afterwards ).

 

What you want, if you feel the need for a weapon IRL, is a kubaton. Small, innocuous, as fast as a punch but almost as powerful as nunchakus - just don't hit anybody on the head with it, or even hit 1st for that matter, unless they are clearly about to do something which threatens your life, otherwise you'll have a hard job explaining what ensues as "reasonable force" to a jury!

 

LOL Alex!

[TPI]

Trust me i have and only an untrained retard woould make that mistake i however am trained to use weapon's defend myself from weapon's and seeing as most people attack in a form the samurai used and very rarely doe's anyone think fast enough to move quick enough i am trained in the best martial art Possible and i am of a limited qauntity who was taught agressive Tai Gyoku Ryu (Aikido) before it was pulled in confidence that my ability far outweigh's one person's even other black belt Art's. but if you want to go in to specific's you can't carry that around with you as it is designated a weapon swap it for a sharpie or a Pocket shark if you know what i mean. A baseball bat if a Baseball is with you is far more cumbersome yes to that i concede.

 

any way though i just intend on hanging mine when i move back into a house with my pal

[joshcowin]

i go for the less martial art approach of a 12 bore with a ssg cartride (9x9mm bbs)

[Ian_Gere]

I do know what you mean and I bow to your superior knowledge. I have a keyring which began life as the metal pin which can be locked in place to keep folding road closing bollards standing up straight. It isn't a kubaton, it's simply a weight which reminds me of whether or not I have picked up my keys before leaving. The fact that it can be attached to my keys by several heavy duty rings is neither here nor there. I just learned a little Aikido and Jeet Kun Do informally from soldier mates; my own study was Shotokan - a little formal for impromptu fighting I think, but I find that the very singular directional form of it projects an air of intense confidence and, I think, it's that which often diffuses a situation and/or dissuades people from showing off. also Shotokan sparring doesn't half teach you how to take a good straight arm punch in the face which has stood me in good stead in the pub/wherever...

 

Anyway, since I'm lucky enough to have a real fireplace in my flat, I'm intending to get round to making some kind of nice looking, polished wooden rack-age with space for a few more airsoft guns, rubber melee weapons, collectors items, etc., to go above it sometime this winter. I met a couple of lads @NAE12 who were carrying full length Santoprene (if memory serves, but sp?) katanas and now I really want one. And a rubber machete!

 

Edit to add: I was replying to Craig W H

[Airsoft-Ed]

I wish Skirmish allowed the use of rubber knives, 'cos I'd really like to be able to add one to my kit list for my British loadout, but there's just no point if I can't potentially make use of it at my most visited site.

 

I say "potentially" because the chance of me being able to get a melee kill at Skirmish is not something I reasonably foresee lol.

[Ian_Gere]

They allowed them at the night game @Skirmish. There was one point where, if I hadn't freaked out and started madly firing the G36c I was using, I might have got pocket with a knife kill - he knew I was there, but couldn't tell who I was. As it happens we both fired at about the same moment, but I was already diving behind some of those ammo crates so I didn't get hit!

 

I think you might be surprised, mate. I've seen you get well forward plenty of times, so you've obviously got a well honed instinct for what cover will work at any given time. Add the dark to that and the the diversion of other people moving in, making a load of noise, showing torch light and firing AEG's... yeah, I think you and Billy could be quite the ninjas if you put your mind to it!

[Alexb111]

Going briefly back to martial arts the best way to take a guy with a baseball bat out is step in close and knee into the groin. Nothing fancy, works 99% of the time, doesn't normally leave marks or bruises (In case you get taken to court).

If their wheeled into court with bandages and a broken face you'll have a much harder time convincing the jury that the force was reasonable.

 

Using any weapon against an unarmed opponent will get you in some form of trouble unless there extenuating circumstances (pregnant, gang etc). Also when things such as a rolled up newspaper can in law be classed as a weapon I would seriously advise sticking to your body parts when returning fire.

Having trained for around 11 years now in 3 different martial arts (all for various lengths of time) I have also run and instructed at several clubs and got asked a few questions about this and such so trust me when I say I know

 

Ok, moving closer to the topic with Knife kills:

It is possible if rare, night games increased chance if your sneaky but:

1) Its easier to shoot someone

2) Its added weight that doesn't help

3) The only advantage is a silent kill but seen as its not a 'kill' and there is usually havoc going on everywhere anyway its not really that much of an advantage.

 

On topic of Storage:

Actually I have nothing to say here