I decided to try an experiment after watching this video…
Something is amiss here. It can’t be that easy, can it? Let me first say that the kid in the video did have a little help here and there and it seemed that he knew the code to one of the safes (don’t see how that’s showing a defective safe) but a few of the safe break-ins were disturbing to say the least.
So, I figured I would do my own test of one handgun safe, the Bulldog Digital Pistol Vault, which is what I own and use:
One of these days I’m going to upgrade to a biometric safe for ease of access but this Bulldog safe is what I could afford at the time.
Anyway, the experiment was this: put something my kids would want inside the safe (not a handgun, mind you) and tell them they had twenty minutes to break into the safe by “any means necessary” so long as they didn’t destroy my safe. FYI, my boys are 8 and 11.
To start with they were very excited. It was the “ultimate” challenge! About five minutes later my youngest began to give up and only sporadically returned to help the older one.
As you might suspect, they first started with pushing buttons to enter a code but got it wrong several times in a row at which point the safe incessantly beeped for a few minutes and wouldn’t let them put in any more codes until it was finished beeping. They tried this strategy a few times here and there thinking they knew the six-digit code but to no avail. They even tried to “trick” my wife into giving them the code but she didn’t know it either. Actually, she probably could have figured it out if she’d thought about it.
I was, in fact, surprised how long it too my eldest son to search the depths of YouTube to find out how to break in; I even hinted he should do so mostly because I didn’t want to wait a full hour for them to get this done! After searching, my kids tried a few things, including dropping it one it’s side like the kid in the video (that didn’t work), using the factory code (that didn’t work either), and one or two other tricks that didn’t help… can’t remember what they were now.
Eventually, he found that this safe had a key override slot (which he located) but, as luck would have it, he couldn’t find the override key (there are actually two keys). Now that I think about it, if he had spent a bit more time thinking about this he probably could have found the key as it is a fairly unique shape and I keep all of my spare keys in one spot.
Ultimately, I gave them thirty minutes as they were still working on it but they never could get the handgun safe open, which is the entire point, after all! Part of me was certainly glad to see they couldn’t get in but another part of me really figured they would be able to open it.
Obviously, none of this really matters as my kids have been taught to leave firearms alone when I’m not around and they are definitely old enough to do so; however, they are at that age where firearms are a huge fascination to them as well. Regardless, now I’m not sure if this was a good experiment or not since they are far more familiar with my handgun safe than they ever were before!
So, given my experiment of one, I’d say the video above is most likely a bunch of staged B.S. Of course, I’m sure the quality of your handgun safe matters and the Bulldog Digital Pistol Vault, though relatively inexpensive, serves it’s purpose quite well.
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