Christmas is just around the corner and thousands of Americans are expected to travel away from their homes and businesses this week to visit family throughout the country. Here are a few tips to keep your belongings secure from criminals who see holiday travel season as the prime season to commit burglaries.
The tips, from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, are geared toward Federal Firearm License holders leaving behind firearm inventories during protracted holiday hours, making them particularly attractive targets from criminals.
“Criminals are counting on FFLs being closed while owners and staff are spending time with their families,” NSSF said. “The bad guys are also counting on law enforcement schedules being lean for the same reason.”
Even if you aren’t an FFL dealer, NSSF’s tips for gun business owners are also good advice for gun collectors or any home or business owner looking to ensure that your belongings are as secure as possible while you’re away.
Here’s NSSF’s full list of suggestions:
- Conduct an alarm system test to make sure all alarm devices are working properly. This walk-through should also include verifying your alarm monitoring service has current phone numbers for all key holders that will be available and able to respond to alarm emergencies. Your lead store manager visiting family out of state won’t be much help if you have a break-in, so change the call list with the alarm company accordingly to accommodate such scenarios.
- If you cannot relocate all your firearms out of sight, at least move your highly desirable firearms, especially handguns and modern sporting rifles, to safes that are out of sight or take other steps to secure them, such as running cable and lock systems.
- If you’ll be closing the store for an extended period, whether for a long four-day weekend or for the full week between Christmas and New Year’s, consider moving your heavy display safes in front of windows and doors as a deterrent to vehicle ram-and-grab thefts (and you can certainly also use these safes to store display firearms).
- Run a check to ensure your security video system has all its cameras working and that the recording medium is functioning properly. If for some reason you choose not to record (perhaps for storage space reasons) during normal store business hours and your device is on a timer that accommodates your normal closed-hours schedule, reprogram that recording time span accordingly.
- Save this task for daylight hours, but you should perform an inspection of roof hatches and other exterior access panels, checking for tampering and even installing additional locking mechanisms if your store will be closed for any extended period.
- Leave an adequate number of sales floor lights on to provide visibility to your store’s interior to passing vehicles and law enforcement. Keep in mind point No. 2 above, though, and remove firearms from sight. A properly lit store interior showing empty display cases deter criminals because they will see there is nothing of high value that’s easily obtainable in a smash-and-grab attempt.
- Do you have company vans or trucks? Park them in front of main entries and overhead receiving doors to deter vehicle-ramming attempts.
- This may seem an obvious thing, but it takes little time to go through your final lockup twice. Make those checks thorough, verifying that all entry doors and inventory and records storage areas are physically locked. This double-check also allows you to do a last sweep for criminals who may be hiding and waiting for you to close up so that they can perform their theft later with the advantage of already being inside the store.
- Take all the cash to the bank! There’s no reason to lose even a couple hundred dollars of cash register starting bank to a break-in, especially when you’ll have to deal with other damage if such a crime occurs.
- Consider hiring a security guard or guards if your store will be closed for an extended time. The extra cost of paying holiday overtime might well be worth it compared to an extensive loss of inventory and firearms.
Average homeowners, of course, probably aren’t going to hire security personnel to watch their property while they travel but enlisting a trusted neighbor or nearby friend to check on your property isn’t a bad idea if you’ll be away for an extended time over the holidays.
Other tips on the list make perfect sense for homeowners.
If you have a home alarm system, check it. Keep windows covered whenever possible so thieves can’t easily see valuables inside and get a feel for the layout of your home as easily. Secure pet doors and other entrances you may pay less attention to during your regular daily routine. A car in the driveway can serve as a deterrent to criminals driving around unfamiliar areas looking for vacant homes. Lock your guns and other valuables up and secure cash that you aren’t carrying with you in a fireproof safe. If you don’t have a home video monitoring system, there are many affordable and very easy to install options on the market. Alternatively, a game camera placed on the property in an area where it would record the comings and goings of unauthorized people could bring thieves to justice in the event you are burglarized.
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