I’ve been wanting some quick access storage for a long gun for several years. I wanted secure bedroom storage for a shotgun or AR, and obviously neither of those fit into my biometric pistol safe. Frustrating. Though my children are grown and gone now, my day job as a pediatrician makes me acutely aware of the need for secure storage for firearms in the home. Grandchildren may show up eventually and I want to be prepared.
Up to this point I have been “making do” with a long gun case secured to the under -bed frame with a combination cable lock. Secure, but not so quick-access. After watching the safe storage products slowly evolving at SHOT Show for the past few years, I finally pulled the trigger on what I wanted. I ordered a SecureIt Fast Box 47
The Fastbox 47 is a light weight keypad combination safe designed to be flat mounted under-bed, or in a vertical mount (as in a closet), or even vehicle mounted. I wanted to do a bed mount because I didn’t want to put any holes in my walls. I own my own home, but I hate wall holes. This can be an issue for apartment dwellers and other renters as well.
The Fast Box has a four-button combination keypad, which is what I wanted for middle-of-the-night access. I didn’t want to be fumbling around for a key in the dark, or have to turn on a light and blind myself.
Besides mounting hardware and leveling feet, the safe also comes with a thin neoprene pad to keep your flat stored gun(s) from scraping around on a metal surface. The vertical mounting hardware is sold separately.
The mounting holes are pre-drilled allowing for a variety of options and there are also ventilation holes to help keep your stored guns from accumulating moisture.
Installing the Fast Box 47
Preparing for installation was initially semi-traumatic, but only because it forced me to confront the reality of how long it had been since I last vacuumed under the bed. There was an entire evolving civilization of dust bunny culture under there. I hated to destroy all of their hard work, and briefly considered tolerance and coexistence, but then bowed to inevitable dominance of humanity. I got out the vacuum and cleared the place out – after a dose of antihistamine of course.
I admit that housekeeping isn’t my strong suit. I’m usually much too involved in things like medicine and guns to notice the dust when I fall into bed exhausted at night. And I’m much too weird about people touching my stuff to allow a cleaning lady into my house. Bottom line – if you want to come to visit you need to give me at least two weeks’ notice, mkay? Even then no guarantees.
But getting back to the Fast Box. This thing is very sturdily built. When it arrived I managed to pull it up into the house from the porch and drag it into the living room to unbox it, but then I had to push it upstairs from behind because it was too heavy for me to carry. I read the directions, got it open, installed the battery and programmed my own security code. So far so good.
But then I discovered a major problem – I didn’t have the right kind of bed frame. Mine was heavy wood, not skinny metal. And the mounting brackets and screws were designed for the skinny metal kind. *sigh* I know I should have thought about this before hand, but how many of you know right off the top of your head what kind of bedframe you have?
Installation video
I’m still trying to figure out a different bracket configuration that I can jury rig from the hardware store. I’m sure it’s do-able, I just have to think about it. Work has been crazy, so it might be a little while til I can get this figured out. In the meantime the Fast Box 47 is still in use in my bedroom, even if it isn’t bolted down. It can still fend off curious little fingers and nosy houseguests, and it would take some effort to remove it from the bedroom.
The unit is quite roomy. It easily holds my rebuilt “tactical” Mossberg 500 AND my Aero Precision AR pistol with additional space for a couple boxes of shells and a couple 30 round magazines. There is even a little additional space where I might be able to fit my Gen3 Glock 19 in a holster if I organize carefully.
I’m not really “planning” on needing that much firepower in a home invasion scenario, but better to have and not need, as they say. Besides, my main safe is getting a little crowded anyway, and this decentralizes things a little.
I realize that having a crowded safe isn’t really a bad thing. It just means that I may need to invest in more SecureIt products in which to store my expanding “family”. Fast Boxes can be bolted together, so that is an additional selling point, and incentive for me.
If you have gun storage challenges like I do, check out SecureIt for a variety of “decentralized” safe storage options, including the Fast Box 47.
