Concealment Furniture

A forced entry into my home would only give me about 3 seconds to get to a gun while sitting in my living room. With the help of a colleague, we timed different assaults with me positioned in different rooms. If I was in a common area, I would be sitting on a recliner or couch. If I were in a bedroom, I practiced from under the covers in my bed. Each time we ran the drill, the outcome looked grim. Shortly after that epiphany, I learned about hiding guns in sliding wall frames made by a company called Tactical Walls. That was 2014.

Spending $500 on a 1450M Bundle to keep a carbine secure and within reach of my bed and $200 for a 812 pistol-length shelf to store my concealed carry piece at the end of the day might seem like a pricey investment to gun owners who have never tried one. I urge you to check out tacticalwalls.com and discover the best way to securely stage firearms throughout your house. I've worked toward having a 3-second gun in each floor of my house, and have discovered other uses for Tactical Walls along the way.

Besides storing rifles, pistols, shotguns, lights and spare magazines, I've also installed Tactical Wall's covers and shelves to hide my wife's most expensive jewelry. Above my carbine, I keep a metal lock box held by the Tactical Wall's magnet system, which hides a small amount of emergency funds, copies of family photos and important documents. Should my house ever catch fire while I'm in bed, I can quickly grab the lock box during my family's escape.

Wargaming is what my friends and I call this approach to preparing for worst-­case scenarios. Though I feel better about my home defense plan, I've always felt awkward about having immediate access to a firearm while sitting and enjoying television or asleep in bed. What if I don't get up fast enough?, I've though to myself.

This year, Tactical Walls introduced a new lineup of durable and attractive concealment tables that addresses my concerns of delayed mobility. Rather than a magnet for a key like I use to access my shelves and wall covers, these tables are opened by an RFID keycard that I hide within reach of where I sit or lay. If I need access to what's inside, I grab the keycard, swipe it across the front of the table, which releases the bottom cover. From there, gravity takes over and the weight of what's inside pulls against hydraulic shocks so that the drawer doesn't slam down and bounce a gun onto the floor. Once it's open, the drawer slides on ball bearings to present fast access to my home defense arsenal or my everyday carry loadout. I now have a true 3-second gun secured within every room of my house. Because my wife and I are the only ones who know where the keycards are kept and how to open the drawers, they provide a high level of security against tampering by the majority of people who don't recognize what these tables actually are.

I can't recommend Tactical Walls' products enough. I've been living with them for three years now and their performance hasn't degraded, which speaks to their quality. Their innovation remains very clever, though I've noticed several other companies advertising gun-storage furniture copying these designs. The difference? Most of the others are made overseas, while Tactical Walls are made in Virginia by hard-working Americans using American-made materials. Visit tacticalwalls.com to learn more.