Topic

YOUR BED

In addition to the living room and bathroom, the bedroom is an excellent place to hide guns. You can use the same false drawer trick on your nightstand. For larger guns, your bed offers plenty of great hiding spaces.

If your bed rests on a frame with some elevation off the floor, you can easily build a short ledge extending inwards from the bedframe. If you have some handyman skills and want to thoroughly disguise your hiding place, build a ledge on both sides of your bed, extending in wards about eight inches, and close it off with a series of three latched doors. The goal here is to make it look like your gun ledge is actually another structural support holding up the bed. You want an interior door on your shelf so anyone sliding under the bed won’t see your guns. You want to split it in to three doors so if you’re on the floor, you can easily open the secret drawer from any angle. You never want to be too far from a secret latch that can open the door.

If you don’t have access to tools, you can bundle larger guns inside neatly folded blankets and store those under the bed. It’ll look like you’re prepared for a cold night, not an unexpected attack. The headboard of your bed is another great hiding place. If you have the know-how to build an integrated drawer under your bed, you can create something very similar along the sides of your headboard. In this case, it should go horizontally on the inner part of the outermost edge of the bed. Build your drawer to match the length of your guns and design a door that will open inwards. Keep the look up for the entire length of the headboard. You can build extra drawers underneath the one holding your gun and use those to store cash, gold, or other valuables. Instead of a simple pressure latch or hook and eye, the valuables drawers should be kept closed with a key.

If your family won’t let you take your bed apart for the sake of a construction project, you can always install a simple floating bookshelf to the back. Anchor one shelf about a foot down. It should be able to bear the weight of your guns. Hide it with a floating shelf near the top of the headboard. Instead of anchoring the second shelf, simply rest it on the metal supports. That way, if you need your guns, all you have to do is throw the movable shelf out of the way in an instant and reach straight down. You can install this type of simple shelving using nothing but a screwdriver and patience.