Fortress Gun Safes

If you own a handgun, you want to find the safest way you can to secure it from your children or even intruders. A safe that opens quickly and reliably, yet cannot be easily “picked” open is the best option. You may want to consider a biometric handgun safe.

Biometrics looks for ways of uniquely distinguishing humans by identifying physical or behavioral traits. One such use of biometrics is fingerprint recognition. The safe industry has begun to utilize this technology instead of the conventional ways to lock a safe. The use of this type of lock is very popular in handgun safes.

Most of these high-tech type safe entry systems use a specially made biometric keypad that can also be programmed with a combination for entry. Once your fingerprint is programmed into the keypad, the safe will only open by the touch of your finger onto the scanner, by entering the combination correctly, or both, if you choose to set it up that way. Fingerprint recognition works by sensing the circulation moving through the finger. So, in theory, these locks cannot be opened with a fake fingerprint or in the unlikely event that someone removes your finger and touches it to the scanner on the keypad.

When you touch your finger to the scanner, the instrumentation inside the keypad reads your fingerprint and compares it to all of the saved fingerprints in its system. When the match is found, the lock will open. If a match is not found, a “missed combination” record is saved. After a certain number of misses, the lock will shut down and lock you out for a pre-set amount of time.

There are those who are not proponents of biometric handgun safes. They believe that the technology in the fingerprint scanners is not yet reliable enough. Studies have shown that about 2% of the time the scanners give a false reading and the safe won’t open. This can be due to something as simple as dirty fingers or possibly the dependability of the scanner. Those who don’t believe that the fingerprint recognition technology is refined enough claim that it is alarmingly easy to perform “fingerprint hacks”.

The simpler pushbutton locks found on the majority of gun safes are as quick to open as a fingerprint lock and don’t require batteries. With a biometric fingerprint lock, the batteries can run down if the lock is not used often enough.