America’s Surge In Gun Sales And A Revolutionary Way To Store Them

28.03.2024 - 20:23 / forbes.com

Several years ago, I produced a TV special for Discovery’s Destination America network called Armageddon Arsenals, a gritty take on the doomsday prepper craze that continues to sweep the world—especially in the aftermath of the global pandemic.

The documentary examined the why’s and how’s of people who figured lead (in the form of bullets) was more valuable than gold and silver in the event of a societal meltdown. I recall walking into one man’s weapons cache with seven gun safes (a good start, as they say in Texas), and he began to open the locked vaults, pulling out his favorite weapons for defending his ranch from everything short of Martians. What struck me at the time is how long it took him to dig through the safes to find his favorite pieces. I remembered thinking, zombies just aren’t going to give him that much time.

It's the same problem I’ve had with my own safes over the years, for accessing the right gun for the job often entails removing several firearms before you get to the one you need. In the meantime, it’s not uncommon to knock one gun into another, beginning a domino effect where guns tumble into one another, leaving dents and scratches on the wood of heirloom quail or partridge shotguns.

Like many hunters, my collection is as non-denominational as my sporting pursuits. When your hunting interests are varied, man cannot hunt with one gun alone. Some require scopes and suppressors, which frequently presents a challenge for traditional gun safes that often don’t accommodate a variety of firearms (and accessories) equally.

With gun sales skyrocketing over the last decade, there are now an estimated 425 to 475 million guns in America. India, with 1.44 billion souls, comes in a distant second to the U.S. in firearm ownership at 71 million guns in civilian hands. With the astronomical surge in American gun ownership—more than 17 million purchased in 2022 alone—there is an unprecedented need to store them…securely.

For Tom Kubiniec, a recovering rock guitarist turned gun storage savant who serves as CEO of SecureIt, a pioneering company that is transforming gun storage and safety, there has long been a glaring need to rethink gun security in America. He speaks in almost evangelistic tones when advocating for gun safety and security. “Traditional gun safes simply don’t address the needs that most gun owners have,” he says. “They want their guns secured from those who shouldn’t have access to them, but they want the right people to access both the guns and their many accessories easily.”

In 2008, the U.S. Army Special Forces Command called Kubiniec to help them transform their cluttered weapons racks into organized, weapons storage systems. The outcome was a newly conceived approach to