> The only difference between me and every other random joe that buys a gun safe at bass pro/cabela's, is that I know what an /actual/ safe is, and I went about acquiring one rather than the cheap RSC you can bypass with a pry bar and a hammer or a sawzall.
While I'm on that topic, there's a few things everyone should know about safes.
An RSC, or Residential Security Container, has a very minimum standard, and the "gun safes" even though they are heavy and bulky at bass pro are usually RSCs. They are legally required to be marked, and if they are marked RSC, they are no more secure against burglary than your typical sheet-steel locking cabinet at the hardware store. Sometimes they're actually worse. The big thick door and the big thick walls on those "gun safes"? Well, generally it's two thin sheets of steel with drywall sandwiched between them. Why drywall? Well, it helps with fire protection and is the primary way in which the safe gets fire rated.
So let's talk about that drywall for a second. When you have a fire rated safe that uses drywall and it doesn't hermetically seal it, that drywall can actually cause corrosion of firearms or other metal objects and degradation of papers stored within the safe. Modern drywall is exceptionally corrosive, but usually this isn't a problem in homes because it's painted over on the inside to seal it and it off-gases to the outside where homes aren't perfectly sealed. In a safe though, you have a seam-welded outer shell, drywall, then carpet glued over it (which is also corrosive as well), or in better safes a seam-welded outer shell, drywall, then a tack welded inner shell with no carpeting.
Why does drywall cause corrosion and degradation of paper? Two compounds in drywall are responsible: Formaldehyde and Sulfur. Carpet also contains huge amounts of Formaldehyde typically, as does the carpet adhesive. Formaldehyde off-gasses and is itself deeply corrosive. Sulfur compounds in the drywall combine with moisture in the air to produce a chemical reaction when encountering naturally occurring pyrite in the powdered rock base of the drywall to produce iron hydroxide and sulfuric acid when coming into contact with exposed iron and high carbon steel (e.g. what guns are made of). The iron hydroxide off-gasses and the sulfuric acid is left behind and causes corrosion and pitting.
Don't be a big dummy, buy a real safe, not the crap they sell for thousands of dollars at big box stores with less than $100 in materials costs. If you are okay with the security level of an RSC you can get by with a plain locking steel cabinet.
