This is episode number 330 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We are so glad that you could join us for another live episode here in the studio. How you doing, Kev?
And I am I'm great, dude. There's so many great things going on in life.
I know why you're happy. Well, do you?
Why, why do you think— why do you think I'm happy?
Because the school that you didn't even go to is in the top 4.
That's true, that's true.
Um, it's all going to come crashing down in a couple weeks.
We'll see. That's my prediction.
I don't know, we'll see. I think that, uh, anyway, college football playoffs are among us. It's exciting times. Craig and I are obviously—
Both of our teams got in.
Both of our teams got in. A&M, Texas Tech. It's fun times. Uh, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see. Don't worry.
I mean, like, I am, I am equally as pessimistic about me as I am about you.
Well, it'll, uh, it'll, it'll be real interesting. I think that, uh, that A&M had a weird road there at the end, uh, you know, with the loss to, to Texas and bumped them out of the SEC Championship, all that kind of stuff. But You know what I mean? It's not all bad. He got an extra week off.
Like they, they, you know, if you're gonna lose, you know, you did it at the right time.
You get the week off. That's right. You don't have to get beat up by Georgia. That's just, save that for later.
Your time too will come, my friend.
Yeah, for real. Uh, but no, other than that, it's good, man. And we had Thanksgiving. It was fantastic. The weather was great. We, we got a new smoker. I don't, I haven't even told you about this.
We got a new smoker down at, uh, Caddo Lake and, uh, It, ew.
Was this different from the dishwasher smoker? Is it?
Not a, no, it wasn't a, come on, Craig. It wasn't a dishwasher.
Yeah, it was a refrigerator smoker. That thing was amazing. Uh, we actually haven't had her for about 4 or 5 years now. She, uh, she bit the dust.
I can't imagine when you lace pork with asbestos, it goes very well.
Look, the asbestos was all gone. We got rid of it. Uh, but no, this one, dude, it's, it's huge. We, we We were able to— so it's got— it had 3 racks in it, and we were able to put 6 racks of ribs on one of the racks.
So, and laying flat, not standing up. So it has some surface area. We put 2 20-pound briskets on one rack.
That's a huge smoker. It was perfect.
So, so cool. So, well, I mean, that'll probably be a show. We've got a lot of stuff coming up. I mean, I know we just took a big trip to Big Bend.
Which was incredible. Let's see, I've got a story that I'm investigating right now about pigs in California showing up with blue fat. And people are saying it's because they're being infested, not infested, infected with rodenticides.
And so I'm checking into that to see if there's any validity to that. I'm a little suspicious, but so I'm gonna run this one down for everybody and see if there's actually any validity to that. I mean, it could be. I understand why they think that and everything, but we'll see what's going on there. And then at some point in time, I'm gonna talk about what happened in our family last Wednesday, which was my daughter just getting in a horrific car accident. She's okay, by the way.
Yeah, you could have led with that with me, by the way.
Well, there you go. Where's the fun and explaining?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Oh, it was not. So anyway, we're gonna talk, we'll probably talk a little bit about that one in upcoming episodes. So we got a lot of cool stuff coming up.
And I don't even think I told you I got a Starlink. Oh, you did? I did. I bought it.
Well, reasons, but we need to talk about it.
At some point. There's a few things that we've had recently.
Did you get it for your RV? Is that what you got it for?
Oh, after, okay, I see. You used the studio stuff and you're like, okay, this actually works.
Well, no, no, no. Maybe a little bit.
But, but the thing is, like, we don't— like, where we go for Thanksgiving, there's no internet at all. Like, not just no internet, there's no cell signal, there's, there's nothing. And I'm just kind of at a place in my life where I'm like, look, it would be nice to have some access if something happened. So, um, anyway, but yeah.
Well, let's, let's thank the sponsor and then get into the show.
All right, let's do it. Our sponsor for today's show is True Texas solar and roofing. And, uh, I'll tell you right now, guys, uh, we are still, believe it or not, 2025 is almost over and there are still tax incentives available.
Barely. They have not gone away and they're still available. And, uh, I'll, I'll just tell you, it, it's, it's always great to have, uh, a company out there that's not just out there trying to sell you something. I don't care who they are. But True Texas Solar and Roofing, they are truly different. They are looking to help people, try to help you find energy independence by giving you exactly the type of opportunity that you need, which is to own your own energy.
By creating that from solar. They have whole home battery backups. They've got, they've got roofing solutions. So you can, you know, if you need a new roof, a lot of times, It makes sense to get a new roof if you're gonna get solar as well. You can roll a bunch of stuff in together even. Makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. But these guys truly understand what needs to— I just recently, I keep learning stuff about this company and I just recently, it makes all the sense in the world. But Josh, the owner, he's an electrician.
And I'm like, I didn't know you were an electrician, dude. And he was like, well, you know, solar, you kind of gotta have, I was like, oh my goodness, they have so many skill sets. And I'm like, I mean, they've got a meteorologist on their team. They've got NASA engineers on their team. They've got so many people that are really, really out to help you. So anything to add here?
No, I was, I actually had a conversation with him earlier this week and he was just talking to me. I was like, look, man, usually end of the year is just slow for us. He goes, but it's slammed because everyone knows that these incentives are going away probably at the beginning of 2026. And so everybody's wanting to get solar right now. And he goes, we're backed up. He goes, I don't know what to do just because we have so much new business coming in right now, people wanting to get it in before the close of year. And so like, look, here's the deal. Like, give them a call. Like, maybe they can squeeze you in. Like, but that like time is
short and of the essence if you want to get it in and get those incentives before they go away because they are going away.
And one of the things to know, and they'll know more about this than Craig and I will obviously, but a lot of times, It's just a matter of getting paperwork taken care of. And if you can get paperwork taken care of, the work can be done next year. As long as the paperwork gets taken care of this year.
And probably money exchange hands.
Money exchange hands. Prepared to do that. But that's paperwork. All of that.
It is, kind of. But anyway, they can help you get ahold of 'em. Their number is 936-286- 8325. You can also get them at truetexasolar.com, and they can get you taken care of.
Awesome. So I'm actually excited about this one. I've been listening to interviews that our guest has given, specifically the one with the Black Rifle Coffee Company, which, love those guys. They put on a great show, and they have some good coffee too.
But anyway, we got Tom Kubinek from Secure-It Tactical. How you doing, Tom?
I'm doing very well, guys. Looking forward to a, uh, looking forward to a good conversation.
Dude, look, anytime we can have a guy on the show where I can talk about guns and guitars, it's like perfect.
It's like the perfect storm for you.
It's my wheelhouse, baby. So I'm excited.
I had an Instagram account. I don't have time for Instagram, but I had Guns, Cars, and Guitars.
Nice. It was a, um, dealt with— I restore vintage cars. It's one of my hobbies. I, I keep a My warehouse here in Syracuse is, we don't use it anymore. We've moved to much larger warehouses in the South. So it's, well, 3/4 of it is an auto shop now.
Oh, nice. So it's your playground. That's what you're saying.
That's right. I call it therapy.
It's cheaper than therapy, probably.
Yeah, it's way cheaper. I go out and spend an hour sometimes in the afternoon, just if I gotta clear my head, you know, busy hands, clear mind. You just get, you get focused on something and it really just allows you to cut through everything.
That's awesome. What, what is, uh, just— we have to tangent for just a minute because you said cars. What's either your favorite car that you own or that you have owned or that you've restored? What's, what's kind of your favorite out there?
Um, my Sabres. I have 2 Elmquist Sabres. Nice. You've probably never heard of them.
It's— there's 5 of them that we know of in the world.
I have 2. They're not crazy. Like, what it is, is, um, they're 1956 cars, and it is the, uh, it's the car that started the kit car industry. It's the very first marketed— the concept that you could build your own car. I found one in a field for $800, and that was about a 10-year project. I ended up sending it out to a shop Um, that car won an award at Amelia Island. Then the second one I obtained because of my first one. Somebody had a body, they said, dude, they basically gave it to me. And we built a, uh, 750cc— that's a little Suzuki GSX 750 motor. Um, we built a Bonneville land speed car and we broke the Class J record in August.
Oh wow, that's, that's recently.
Yeah, that was a fun— the record was 111. Um, by the end of the week, we are— the record we set was 141.
We actually went— we went 172 on our fastest run. You have to do 2 runs to set a record. On the second run, which was Friday morning, the last day, our last run, we had to back up our 172, and we— spark plugs just melted down, and we did 113. But it Averaged out to 141.
We're going back next year. We learned a lot. And the car, with the right gearing, we're making so much power with this engine, it's ridiculous. And the car is so clean. We're going to target about 230 miles an hour next year.
That will be a statement that— that's a record that will not be beaten because nobody will ever spend the amount of time, money, and effort To build a car with an engine this small. Yeah, and it makes sense. It's truly, um, it's an engineering marvel to get power from a little Suzuki motorcycle engine, to get a driveshaft, because we had to run front engine rear drive per class rules. And normally with a little motorcycle, you'd want to chain drive to the front wheels, and we couldn't do it. It really— it took a lot. It took a lot of effort. But that little motor, we're putting out just shy of 300 horsepower.
It's, it's, uh, yeah, we can run— we, we ran 17 pounds of boost in the turbo. We can run it to 25. We just didn't get there. We just didn't have enough testing time. But, uh, it's, it's quite a, uh, quite an engineering feat to get that all done. But yeah.
Did you, did you grow up working on cars?
I did. My— I grew up in a non-car family, but I've always been a You know, when I was in high school, I bought a beater '67 Mustang and restored it.
And then I've always driven— when I was a musician, I drove a '66 Ford Falcon for probably 8 years. I actually found one, and I'm just getting about ready to paint. I'm building a copy of my original car when I was a musician, only this one's going to be just done up to the hilt. There'll be a 5-speed V8. I've got BMW leather, you know, BMW front seats, all, you know, beautiful interiors. It's going to be a really neat little street rod.
That's awesome. You'll have to send us some pictures when you're done with that.
Yeah, if you Google search Elmquist Sabre, you'll see tons of pictures of my Sabres because they're the only— they're the only 2 out there and I get a lot of attention.
I'm just curious about the brand. Is it— is it kind of like when you could buy a house out of the Sears catalog, or was it its own manufacturer, its own brand?
It was. So Elmquist Engineering Ed Elmquist really is the grandfather or father of American hot rodding. He wrote the very first book on how to hot rod a motor and how to build performance in cars in 1947 and started Elmquist Engineering, which was the, the main hot rod parts supply catalog all through the '60s and '70s for all the drag racers, all the big names in drag racing. Developed a lot of performance parts, and he worked with Harry Himes at Clearfield Plastics came up with this little body design, and they put it in their catalog and marketed it. You know, the body was $295.
Then he sold a lot of parts that you could use to build your own car.
All right, so it's, it's, it's fascinating. It's a really fascinating story. Um, Ed died. He was 94. He died in 2016.
I never met him, but his son and grandson came to Amelia Island when we were there with our car. And we got to meet and they follow what we're doing. They may come out to Bonneville next year.
Well, it's okay. So just because we're on cars and this is something I'm interested in, one of my favorite like fixer-uppers is the Scout.
The International Scout. That's what I want. I want one I can four-wheel drive off-road and all that kind of stuff. I'm curious, have you seen the new one? the, the new release of the, the new Scout?
The electric? Yeah, it's the, the modular Scout electric.
It's, it's like a hybrid, but like not really. Um, yeah, but I'm curious what—
I wish them luck. It's going to be very, very difficult for a new company to make a go of it.
I, I think so. It looks cool.
Here's another one. But the, the old Scouts, they come up. I follow um, BAT, bring a trailer, the auction site.
And the Scouts come up for auction. I've bid on several of them. And, uh, because I'm with you, it is— it's just the coolest little truck.
Well, yeah, like, as like kind of an outdoorsy kind of guy, I mean, like, that's like—
Yeah. Yeah, that's, uh, either that. I mean, the old, um, the old Toyota Land Rover— or was it the Toyota? Was the Land Rover?
Yeah, the old Range Rovers, but the old, like the '80s, '90s Land Rovers, those are neat cars.
Yeah, my dad was a landman back in the day. I mean, he managed a huge piece of property in Northeast Texas, and the guy that owned it had a Land Rover for him. And my dad said it was his favorite thing ever, 'cause he could literally just drive it off in a pond and it turned into a boat. Oh my God. And they just floated.
He's like, you could just take it anywhere. They were just pure utility, but like no frills about them. But it was just, but there's nothing you could do to kill them.
Love it. No, it's, there's something to be said. I recently purchased a brand new Ford F-150, drove it home 23 miles from the dealership. The next morning it was towed back to the dealer. 30 days later, Ford wrote me a check and they bought it back from me. They could not make it work.
And yeah, it was just, it was crazy. And that's just, It's just too much technology, you know. It's just— I buy a new car because I need a reliable, you know, obviously transport for doing stuff. I typically drive an F-150, but in the summer I'm either driving a '68 Corvette, you know, I've got a Sunbeam Tiger, I've got— we got a Volkswagen Bug.
So I'm always— I drive old. I've got an F2— old F-250 beater truck. I actually really like it. I just— it's just It's not something I'm gonna take to a corporate dinner or something.
That's awesome. Well, uh, that's, that's awesome, man. We, we could talk about that for, for a long time, I know. But, um, I, I, we're really, we really are curious, and we may get to, uh, some guitar stuff here before, you know, before we're done. But I really wanna get to the meat of what we're, uh, here to talk about, which you, you have a business, uh, specifically surrounding firearms and, uh, with the storage of firearms and, and ammunition and all those sorts of things. And for homeowners, which is what our show's about, like, it's really important to know what any of that looks like. I mean, we, we've all seen the, the stories of
children who have, who have gotten into, to the gun area, whether it was secured or not. And it's just a, it's a big, big deal. Craig and I both have kids and, Uh, I— we, we're really interested in this in a lot of ways. So I'm just kind of curious, tell us a little bit about how you got into it. Give us as much background as you want to, and love to just kind of work through this with you.
So I was a professional guitar player out of high school. I played in heavy metal bands, um, all over the East Coast. I got an article in Guitar Player magazine done on me in 1984.
As one of the best unknown, unknown guitar players, unsigned unknown And the phone started ringing. I moved to LA figuring I'm going to be, you know, let's get an audition for Ozzy. I want to be the next big guitar player.
Were you doing session work or were you playing with the band?
I did. When I was out there, I went to MI for 1 year, 1 year vocational music school, which is really a, it's a performance school. I just wanted to meet as many people as I could. I played with a ton of cool people. But I developed really bad tendonitis in my arms. And I, I, it, it basically crushed my ability to play. So my career was over before it ever really happened. And I had no other skills, so I, I got a job telemarketing typewriter and printer ribbons.
Yeah, back in the day, of course, because they would hire, they would hire anybody. And, uh, I worked at this job, ended up it was kind of a scammy company, so I quit and took a straight commission job at another company that was a good company, but it was straight commission. And I just said, I've got to either produce or die. I've got to figure this out. And instead of playing guitar 8 hours a day, I immersed myself in the world of sales, read everything, listened to a lot of tapes. And, you know, a year and a half into that, I started becoming pretty good at it. And I quit that job and started a company in my apartment selling typewriter and printer ribbons.
You know, 4 years later, I had 18 sales reps. We had a nice little business running. I sold that to my partner, started Greenline Data doing the same thing, got into the internet in the late '90s and started creating websites. Taperack.com became very popular and we became one of the largest sellers. Some of your younger listeners won't know this, but computer systems used to get backed up on little tape cassettes or reel-to-reel tapes, and they had these big metal racking systems for storing all the tapes. And we sold thousands of them. The HIPAA laws came out with where all of a sudden you had to lock up personal data, like hospitals had to lock all their hard drives, all their laptops. So I created
securelaptopstorage.com and poweredlaptopstorage.com, about 16 different websites all focused on laptop storage, and we became a huge player in that market. And in 2001, I got a phone call from a guy who simply said, hey, can you guys store an MP5? I'm like, sure.
And I go, what's an MP5? I figured he told me Mac computer or something. He goes, well, it's a little submachine gun. I just started laughing. I go, who is this? He was with the FBI.
And we talked for a while and I said, I'm sure we could. Let me do a little research and I'll give you a call in a week. So I— this is before Google really. This was back in the Yahoo days. Research wasn't as easy to do, but I started searching around the web looking at, you know, gun storage and weapons storage with the military. and found a lot of references that the military was really struggling. They were transitioning from the M16 to the M4, which is a standard 39-inch battle rifle, the M16, going to really a modular weapon system, which is the M4. All the storage that they've been using for decades was no longer workable. It's obsolete.
Right. And the companies that were supplying them with new systems were— they had an underlying problem that I identified as complexity. Everybody was making the same type of a weapon rack with a back panel and all these different adjustable brackets so that you get the right bracket for the right gun. You could build the armory, store all the guns. If all of a sudden you were getting different guns in, you simply change the brackets and store the new guns. And that's how armories were done. I started working with a Canadian firm that made my laptop cabinets, and, uh, we worked together to develop a weapon storage system. The owner of that company had already been working on some stuff for the Canadian government, and we
became a dealer, but I was sharing a lot of information with them. And then in 2008, Secure-IT, we had formed, you know, originally it was Secure IT selling laptop cabinets. I changed it to Secure-IT and we started selling weapon racks. And we, you know, we were, we had no idea what we were doing. We just did it anyhow.
I love it. Figured it out along the way.
Figured it out along the way?
Yeah, you kind of stumble and fall and you fail fast and learn. We had to have looked like idiots to some of these guys in the military just because we didn't know the nomenclature. You didn't know that, you know, you're talking about these weapons going, it's an MK19, a Mark 19, or the different guns they use. But those guys are all cool and they help you along. But So we were selling this Canadian system, and there was like 2 other manufacturers, and all the systems were basically the same of this back panel weapon rack with all the brackets. The problem was the military could never buy new brackets because buying anything in the military requires a whole lot of work and effort and
signatures and all this stuff.
So weapon armories and weapon storage systems would work when they were brand new. 2 years later, because things are very dynamic and always changing, The weapon, the armories would just be a mess. So in 2008, U.S. Army Special Forces Command at the time was called USAFIC, put out a solicitation. They wanted to hire a company to survey all their armories and write a report as to why they're failing and make recommendations. Now Secure-It was a 3-person company at that point. We were up against L3Harris. You know, these are multi-billion dollar global companies.
We secured a meeting with the colonel who was running this program down at Fort Bragg, and Gary, who was my head sales guy, and I flew down, went to Bragg, and, you know, we were so out of our element. We've never done this before. You know, we had the white shirts on, you know, sport coats. Geez, you know, do we look good? Can we pull this off? And we drive onto the base, which you go through security, and we're walking through the— it's the I was third special forces group is where this guy was. We're walking through their main headquarters building. It was it was a fairly new building. There's all this you know photographs, all this
history lining the walls of everything these guys had done. And I'm walking just looking at all this, and it hit me out of the blue an idea. And I walked into the colonel's office and introduced myself and just said, "Good morning, Colonel. My name is Tom Kubanek." considered the leading authority in small arms storage and armory design. I really think we're the company to do this for you. We sat down, we talked for a while, about 15, 20 minutes. And then we left, got out in the parking lot. And Gary's like, what was that? What the hell was that? I looked at him confused. He goes, leading authority? I started laughing. I said, Gary, nobody knows how to do this. There's no company
that does what we're doing.
We walked in, I simply claimed we're the best.
Nobody can say we're not. We know as much as anybody else. We said we're the pros from Dover, let's win this contract. All we gotta do is back it up. So we came in with a bid, and I'm sure we were dramatically less than all these big— these guys are probably throwing $10 million at this contract. I think our bid was $300,000 to cover all the travel, and we kind of really mapped it all out, and we made a little money on it, but It was more about experience. For the next 18 months, I traveled to every Special Forces base. I spent a day in each armory watching the armorer work, interviewing him, you know,
watching workflow, just taking a deep dive into everything going on in armories and why they're, they're so bad. And over that 18 months, I became the leading authority in small arms storage and armory design. We also, at that time, I developed the Secure-It Tactical Weapon Storage Platform. We presented our report to command and then we introduced our platform. This was in 2009. By 2011, we were the primary supplier to the US military.
That's just amazing. And the biggest difference with what we did versus everybody else, I saw complexity as a problem. I've always lived a life that, you know, strive for simplicity. The simplest solutions are the ones that withstand the test of time. You know, this is a home improvement show. So everybody who does any work on your homes, you got a junk drawer in your kitchen. And what's in that drawer? You keep a hammer, some— maybe a pair of pliers, a couple different screwdrivers, maybe some zip ties. We keep the simplest tools handy because with the simplest tools you solve the most problems.
Secure Tactical Storage Platform was the simplest tool. It was a big weapon rack with one adjustable cradle that would hold the guns, no tools required. That one bracket would hold everything from an MP5 up to shoulder launch weapon systems.
So once they had my arm— once they had my system in their armory, the armor could walk up to a rack, it didn't matter what gun or what weapon he had, adjust it, set it down, and walk away, and it would never go obsolete. It wouldn't— he would never have the wrong components. And, uh, The other part of our system storing all the gear, we literally went to Home Depot. I called it Home Depot development and walked the storage aisles just saying, how does America store stuff? Because we wanted to make sure our system was compatible with common off-the-shelf products. Everybody else is proprietary. You want to do anything with your weapon storage system or your safe, you got to go back to the manufacturer. With our system, even with our consumer
system, once you have my system, you can go to any hardware store and buy components that will go in it and it will work.
Oh, that's kind of nice because, you know, everybody knows proprietary is just another word for expensive.
Absolutely. And you're controlling the market. Our methodology and our reasoning was we're dealing with firearms, we're dealing with deadly force. It's much more important to give people a system that allows them to be as safe and to be as prepared as they can. And we always refer to Secure-It, you know, our storage solution is a tool that allows the user or the operator to build the unique system that meets their specific needs. And that's, you know, that's the big Secure-It difference. And then there's a whole methodology to how we actually store guns. And we went into consumer products in 2000— We started in 2014, and we really didn't get going into retail products till probably 2016.
And that was bringing our weapon storage platform, our military system, to the consumer market. And it's a radical departure from a gun safe.
Yeah, I've been reading a lot about your gun safes. And like, are you, are you like sort of compacting what you've done for the military to bring into the home? Or is it like just just a complete redesign for the homeowner or the consumer?
It's the exact same system. It's just instead of our big Model 84 weapon rack, the cabinets are smaller.
And what we do, the biggest, you know, one of the biggest differences for Secure-It versus the gun safe industry. In the gun safe industry, the core thinking is you buy the biggest safe you can afford because you're going to grow into it. I hear that all the time. So you're buying this great big behemoth monster and a great big heavy safe can only go like in your basement or your garage or a couple places in your home.
And all your guns go in there. Secure it, and this is coming from the military, is no! Why would you want one great big huge single fail point for all your guns? It's far, far, far better to have 3 or 4 small safes which are then located far more strategically in your home. And, you know, with the military, we did the same thing of, you know, breaking up big armories. We use the term decentralized storage. And, you know, you look at a Marine Corps, if they've got a reaction force, which is— this is the force if the base is attacked, a terrorist attack, these are the guys that respond. Well, we're like, look, where are the Marines? Where do they stay? Okay, where's— where are the perceived threats, threat points? Okay, so the armory should be somewhere
between that. so they can move towards where they need to go, arm themselves, and get there, as opposed to having them all go to a central place on the base somewhere to get their guns and then drive or get transported back to wherever the conflict is.
Can we pitch that to the Marines?
That's something that I think— I love the idea behind that because, you know, a long time ago— small tangent— a long time ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a photographer. And I was asking him, I said, what's, what's the best camera on the market? And he, his, um, his response was the one in your hand. And the, the, I, it took me a minute to understand what he meant, but he was like, look, it doesn't matter. Like the moment is going to pass you if you are looking for that perfect camera. But if you have one in your hand and you can snap a picture of the moment, now you have the moment. Otherwise you miss it altogether. And I think that the,
the adage rings true here as well. If you, if you have a need for a firearm in an emergency, whatever that emergency is, trying to fumble through, try to get to where that one firearm is.
In your home, if you're on the other end of the home, well, you're sunk. The moment has passed and you, you may be sunk for it. So I, I love the idea of this. the strategic opportunity to put them in different places. I guess my question is— and I've looked at your website. The link is in the show notes here. If you want to look below, you can find the link to your website. But tell us a little bit about what that looks like so that the person who's just listening to the podcast might be able to kind of envision what this looks like.
OK. So we actually— I mean, our core system is our core system. And we're not changing it because it absolutely works. First, I'll talk about how you store a gun. The Secure-It Tactical Weapon Storage Platform stores all guns in one row. You're never digging through guns to get to a gun. That's— that is a complete lack of respect for firearms.
So with our safes, they're shallower, which allows you to store them in more discreet locations. You can open the door with one arm, remove a firearm, close it, and lock it. With our HSFA, which is a high-stress fast-access locking system, it's on all of our safes. You know, if I'm standing next to a closet and one of my gun safes in there, I can be armed in a high or low ready position in less than 2 seconds.
And sometimes, depending on the safe, a lot— I can be less than 1 second. But I practice. I'm very good at it. But when you look at crime data in a home, we spent a lot of time on this, you know, really breaking down if we're going to sell consumer firearms, you know, firearm storage, What's the best way to do this? The gun safe industry doesn't do any of this. All they do is make metal boxes and tell you to put them next to your fireplace and your pool table. If you see the ads, they talk about things like heirloom and heritage, and I'm like, you're advertising all your guns are in this safe and there's a window and you have people coming over, and that's just nuts.
If you own firearms, nobody should ever know you own them. You come to my house and hang out, you'd never know I own firearms. I have a pretty big collection. So we look at when a thief breaks into a home, typically it's between about 11:30 and 2 o'clock. They come into your home, they're going to the master bedroom bathroom, master bathroom, then master bedroom closet, master bedroom, home office, den, dining room, and they're out. They're typically in and out in 9 minutes.
There's a ton of data on this. That's how we kind of pulled all this. So when we look at firearm storage, Or for listeners, any valuable storage. Your master bedroom is the least secure room in your home. If you're married, you've got like— your wife's got a lot of jewelry, it should not be kept in the closet or in your master bedroom or in your master bathroom. That— it's just— you're just asking for trouble. So in firearm storage, people want to have access to a firearm when they're sleeping if they feel vulnerable. So we recommend one small fast access safe next to your bed or under your bed. We make the Fast Box. We make a couple of solutions. Other companies do. And then, but no more than that.
Next, I look at if you've got a large firearms collection or just 1 or 2, 3 guns, then look at the kitchen. Kitchen's probably the most secure room in your home. Thieves aren't interested in stealing food.
That's not why they're there.
They're not after my KitchenAid mixer? Right.
But people don't think about this. So I've got a kitchen pantry that's pretty good size. In that pantry, I've got one of our Agile 6-gun cabinets. In that cabinet, I've got an AR-15 home defense rifle. I've also just got part of my gun collection. And then with our bin and modular storage system, all my wife's jewelry, I've got a couple of watches, they're all stored in there.
Because nobody's gonna go into my kitchen pantry, you know, trying to steal valuables. That's a really good thought.
I've never thought about that before.
That is really smart. We don't, we really, we, because we didn't approach it from the gun safe angle. We approached it from the threat.
And this goes back to how we evaluate military and how we evaluate making systems. What's the threat? And how do you, how do you best protect yourself from the actual threat? Your next location is your closet next to your front door. Closets are Very secure locations. Thieves tend not to spend time going through closets. There's just coats in there. I've got another Agile cabinet in my closet. I've got 6 guns, one of which is a pump shotgun with rounds in the tube, and I've got an AR-15 that's ready to roll. Somebody comes to my front door and I don't want to let them in and they decide to get cute, I can be armed in, you know, less than
2 seconds. Very, very quick. And the process just moves to your home with that methodology. But it's getting away from the idea of buying a one big safe and putting everything in it. We can talk a little bit about security. Secured safes are lightweight, lightweight modular safes. Lightweight does not equal less security. Heavy does not equal security. I don't care how heavy your gun safe is. I can open it and remove firearms in 18 to 20 seconds.
And I know nothing about locks, know nothing about doors. In fact, the whole safe industry focuses all your attention— they talk about security levels: level 1, level 2, level 3. It's always the door. Level 1 is basic. Level 2, you get corner bolts. Level 3, you get drill plates and you get additional steel reinforcement all on the door to make it so nobody can open that door. I'm going to take a circular saw with a carbide blade. The blade is meant For cutting rebar in the cement industry all day long. I can put that into a cordless DeWalt saw and I can cut a 12-inch by 12-inch hole in the side of your safe at the same rate I can cut 3/4-inch plywood. And I've got videos I've
demonstrated I can remove a gun from a safe in 18 seconds.
And that's how safe— if you look at actual data, that's how safes are opened. So this idea about buying a 700-pound gorilla and putting it in your basement and thinking you've got security is nonsense. And the safe industry needs to do a better job of actually explaining what their product is and isn't. The other piece is fire ratings. Our safes are— our Agile line, which is our number one line of modular fast access safes that is a mirror of our military system in just more consumer-friendly packages, it has no fire rating. There is no fire rating to it, and there's a reason. You don't need a fire rating. It's complete— this is the biggest crock of BS,
not just in the gun industry, but in a lot of industries. Fire ratings are 100% nonsense. They're not real. It's, it's a myth. We've demonstrated that a 90-minute safe— we cooked off a 90-minute safe in a fire. Our fire was 900 degrees. We had everything all temped out. The The safe went 12 minutes.
I mean, for people that don't know, what do you mean when you say like a 90-minute safe?
Okay, you buy a gun safe and says fire rating, 90-minute fire rating or 40-minute fire rating. And that is— and if you do some research on fire ratings, the fire test is they take a safe, they put it in an oven, they bring the oven up to 1,200 degrees. And if it takes the safe 1 hour to get to 350 degrees, it's a 1-hour test. At 350 degrees, That's when things start going wrong with your guns.
So that's what the test is. The problem is it's a static test. Fires are dynamic. A fire in your home, temperatures can run 2,000 degrees. The air can be moving in excess of 60 miles an hour. So the best way to look at this is if you're making a pizza, a DiGiorno pizza at your house, preheat your oven to 500 degrees or 450 or 500. Once it's preheated, you could open the door. You can put your hand in that oven. If you hold it very still, you can hold your hand in there for 2 or 3 minutes before it starts getting so hot that you have to pull it out before it burns.
Now picture a small jet engine mounted on a bench that's running. The exhaust is coming out at the exact same 450 to 500 degrees, only it's going 60 miles an hour. You put your hand in that exhaust stream, in less than a second, you will lose all the muscle and skin on your hand. Oh, that's bad. It'll rip your hand apart. That is the— that's the relationship between a convective heat flow versus static, non-moving heat flow in air. And when air is moving, it's an order of magnitude faster for heat transfer. So fire ratings are stat— it's just complete nonsense. A 1-hour rated safe will go About 3 minutes. More importantly though, they just don't— I mean, talk to any firefighter. Do guns survive hot fires? They do not. But also the other
side that listeners really have to realize is, what are you trying to do with a fire rating? What are you trying to protect? Because if your house burns bad and you've got a gun safe, doesn't matter what those guns look like, you're never going to shoot those guns again.
Above 350, at 400, you know, 380 degrees, 400 degrees, hardened steel starts to lose its hardening depending on how it cools. That's your trigger group and your bolt group. Above 680 degrees, annealing changes. That's your barrel. Now, in our fire test, it was a Liberty 90-minute safe. 12 minutes, we hit 400 degrees. We let the fire burn out, we put it out, and we wanted the safe to cool down so you basically disassemble and dismantle this. We were sitting— I was out. We have a big hunting ranch out in the ranch, so we're grilling sausages waiting for the thing to cool off. 15 minutes later, I go over to the safe to see if it's cooling off, and we
had shut the fire off at 400 degrees. 15 minutes later, the inside of that safe was 720 degrees because the hot metal kept conducting heat into the safe.
It was its own oven. Yeah, right.
So at 700 degrees inside that safe All of the barrels— if you had guns in that, all those barrels are now pipe bombs. They could be. I mean, you just don't know, because depending on how that metal cools— annealing is where they heat metal and they cool it under very specific conditions to create metal that is strong yet very flexible. That's what annealing does, because a barrel has to withstand the shock and vibration. If you've had a hot fire, you don't know what those guns are. You've got hardened steel that may not be hard. You've got a barrel that could be brittle. If you've got a .300 Win Mag bolt gun and you're gonna put that up next to your cheek and pull the trigger, you're not. I mean, it's just, it's nuts. No. And if that thing
blows up, it'll kill you.
I think that one of the things that you're saying right now is so important for, for anybody who's listening to this to hear. It, it just drives me to go, look, you better have insurance on your guns. Just get insurance on your guns. Have a separate policy, an umbrella policy of some sort. That will cover your guns so that if you get into a fire issue, you can buy your guns back. I mean, to me, that's the, the better use of your money than to buy something that isn't gonna work anyway. What it sounds like, your, your system, uh, sounds a lot like you said, agile. It's a lot more agile.
Easy to get in, in and out of for you. Still secure, still safe. And if you're, I mean, if your house goes up in a blaze of fire, you're gonna need everything new anyway.
Well, and that's correct.
Well, let me ask you this real quick, because I just wanna make sure everyone understands. You're not saying that your safes aren't susceptible to those things?
No, no, absolutely not. Our advantage is, and that's for decentralized storage and not, again, when you buy one great big safe, it's a single fail point. A thief breaks into your house, and he knows what he's doing. He finds a safe, he's gonna open it, and you've lost everything. When you go with smaller modular safes, you've got a big collection and you decentralize, a thief may find one safe. A fire in a house burn— I mean, the rate of homes in America completely burning to the ground is almost unheard of.
90, like 91% of all insurance claims for fire is smoke damage, fires that are contained within a stove or an oven. Open flame heat damage in a home is incredibly rare, and when it does occur, it's typically confined to one room of the house. Worst case scenario, you have one safe that gets cooked, but again, you're only losing a small part of your collection. When you decentralize, when you use multiple smaller security devices, you're eliminating that single point failure. You've now got your fail points are spread across your home. You've also got faster access wherever you are. There's so many advantages across the board to safety and security by taking on the, you know, what we call military methodology to the consumer
market because the needs are the same. And the process is when you compare consumer gun storage and military gun storage, The only real difference is the military, like SOCOM guys, they're doing it every day and civilians don't. That's the biggest difference. They're accessing and using and putting back firearms every day. I will tell everybody who's concerned about home safety and home defense though, if you buy my safes or any safe, you're going to install these into wherever you're going to put them, put your guns in there, and I want you to practice opening that safe every single day. for at least 35 to 40 days. Every time you open your closet, you're going to open that safe every day and do it in the dark. You want to get
to a point of muscle memory where no matter what is going on, you can do it instinctively and open that safe and retrieve a firearm. And the only way— again, if you're a concealed carry guy, get a handgun. Any training that you do, they tell you dry fire. You're practicing your draw.
You know, Draw, low ready, up into a firing position. And you're like— I shoot with red dots, and when I went to the red dot, it took me probably, probably between 60 and 90 days to get where I could draw and have that gun out there and have the red dot in my sight.
Because it's hard to find sometimes. But I've got— you get your reps into the point where now is I'm so fast. Boom, gun's out, and I can draw the gun, turn and fire, and hit a piece of steel so fast. Because I practice it every single day. It's part of my morning workout routine. If you're gonna— if you're gonna own one, what you're doing this— I want you to— I want you to practice with your safe.
Yeah, because if you're gonna own one, exactly what you're talking about, you have— you have to do that. Because like, if you— if you think for any instance in your life that you're not going— there's not going to be some sort of element of panic in you when you have to have that firearm, you are kidding yourself. And it's one of those weird things where— I'll give you an example. We were, you know, there was a few, and this was several years ago now, but there were several church shootings that happened where, you know, guys went into churches and they just started opening fire, and it was terrible. And so we actually started doing some anti-terrorism training with church leaders because, you know,
there was, you know, this high level of anxiety. and just worry among church leaders about not being prepared for situations exactly like that.
And we were at one of these, and it was pretty simple. It was like we had a group of guys, and we had milk jugs full of Jell-O so that people could fire into them to actually see what their ammunition was doing when it hit a target, and everyone was taking turns. You know, because it's, it's very different when you go to the range because you're not allowed to like holster your weapon and then draw it like that because that's not safe for anybody in there. But we were, you know, we had it out in an open field where you could actually, you know, have it in the holster, remove it from the holster, and fire at the same time, which is just a rare opportunity for some people. And if you've never done it
and you own a firearm and you carry it like that, you have to practice it like that.
And this, this woman stood up, came up to the line, and she was carrying a revolver in her hip, and she drew the revolver, and as she drew the revolver, it came out of her hand and flew up into the air. And as it flew up into the air, she began with both hands then trying to grab the revolver.
Yeah, and everyone that knew what was happening at that moment in time dove for cover.
Because they could see the writing on the wall. And it was— and she was just so nervous because she had never drawn that firearm in her life. And she was not a young woman. I mean, like this— and this was not a young revolver, you know. And it was— it's just stuck in my brain for so long now that like, oh my gosh, you, you have to physically take this thing, stick it in the holster, pull it from the holster. And it's great to do it in front of the mirror, I think.
I mean, because you— Dry fire drills every morning.
Yeah. I mean, it's what responsible people do.
You're bringing up a point that this is— you'll find this very interesting, and this is something we discovered at a shoot house. So Secure-It, we host training events. You know, we're the only gun safe, gun storage company that we live on the performance side of our industry. Most of the gun safe industry is the passive, you know, you get done end of the day, you lock up your guns, you walk away. Secure-It, we're Performance. We're all about training, about shooting, shoot more, train more. And we host training events. So we were down at Summit Point Training Center with Gary Melton and Paramount, and we had brought in a whole bunch of writers. These are all
firearms industry people. These are all shooters, very experienced.
And we're doing a bunch of handgun stuff, and one of the scenarios we set up was a shoot house, force on force using simmunition, and you're wearing the protective gear. It's kind of like paintball.
But you're really simulating— we're simulating home invasion and then a break-in into an office, like an office shooter type scenario. In our scenarios, we had our agile safes, our fast boxes, our fast access safes, where once you're aware that somebody breaks in, you had to go to the safe, open it, retrieve a firearm, then go into a defensive position. It was just going through all the different training, all the stuff. Now, these are all very experienced shooters. And what we found is when the proverbial crap hit the fan and things were happening, and this was dynamic, a dynamic environment, they would get— they would trip into fight-or-flight mode.
You know, when somebody kicks in your front door, you will be in fight-or-flight mode. Your brain goes right down to your limbic brain. You lose all reasoning capability. You develop tunnel vision. You're gonna lose fine motor skills. And what we observed was they couldn't open the safes. because they couldn't get their fingers to hit the buttons because the buttons are too small.
And I'm watching this and these guys are laughing. I can't get the damn thing open. They're going, they're all panicking. It was a fun event. I'm up on top of the catwalk and I'm watching this. And this is on a Saturday. I drove home, you know, DC back at 5. I drove home on Sunday. Monday morning, I went into the office. By Wednesday, I had all the drawings done. About 10 days later, we had the prototypes for a new locking system. We changed every single lock on every single safe we made. It's called HSFA locking, High Stress Fast Access locking. I like that. And what I did is I did a bunch of research and then we designed the lock.
It's larger keypads, tactile, and they're spaced differently. They're more defined. so that when you lose fine motor skill, when you are in a true fight-or-flight state, you're still able to open the lock.
Because the tiny buttons in a standard safe lock, I watched it. These— and these guys were all like really experienced, way more experienced than I am. And I watched them all laughing because they couldn't do it. But if had that been a real break-in or home invasion, these guys weren't going to survive because they couldn't get to their— they they couldn't get to their firearm. And so that's why we— this was a red button item for us. We changed this thing. It's the fastest product development program that we've ever initiated. Because we run manufacturing all over the world. And we designed it, made all the changes, and we incorporated into all of our products in about 95 days.
Our normal timeframe for product development or inline changes is 1 year. So we really jammed on it, and HSFA locking now is the standard for everything we do. And if you're concerned about— truly concerned about fast access and home defense, it's an important thing. Now you can get around it by training with your safe. If you train with a small keypad and you do it every day diligently, it's no different. You know, I learned this from my years of playing guitar. I would take very difficult pieces that I was working on. There was a point when I was transcribing Paganini's Caprices for violin on guitar. They're very difficult, very fast, technical pieces. And I would sit there, I'd drive people nuts. I have a metronome going, I'm
practicing going ding ding ding ding. The piece is supposed to be— it's really fast. I'm playing it so slow it'll drive you nuts, but I'm playing with perfect mechanics, minimal amount of motion I need to do to get to the next note. I'm doing that for 30 to 40 days to learn to train my muscles to do it. Then you bring the speed up. Once you do that, all of a sudden you can play it.
And you can play it so fast and people are like, dude, how are you playing that so clean, so fast? It's because I got— when you're learning, your brain does not have a concept of speed or time. If you're doing a dry fire drill where you're pulling from a holster and you want to get that red dot or get those sights up, do it so slow that you are perfect every time because you're learning the perfect movement and your brain doesn't know whether you're doing 10 of these in a minute or 2.
As long as you get in your 6 or 7 reps every— say 10 reps every single day, you're going to build those neural pathways and you will have that skill set. The guys who are amazing with handguns, they just have more reps in. That's it.
You know, it's really interesting that you said that. My, uh, my brother-in-law is, um, it's a police officer. We've had him on the show. And, uh, it's interesting, one of the things that we, that we talked about, um, is that if you've got your license to carry or whatever, concealed carry license, whatever you call it in your state, um, and, and you don't go to the gun range or you don't, you don't spend time working on this on a regular basis and something happens and you're out and you fire your weapon and, uh, and, and you for some reason miss your target and cause an injury or, you know, Yeah. Even worse, uh, you will be held liable
for that because not, not for any— I mean, you can, you can claim self-defense, you claim whatever you want to, but if you cannot prove that you have been actively practicing, then they're going to consider you negligent, even if you hold a license for that. So, and I'm, I'm not a court of law. I'm not the one, you know, that, that's out, that's saying that. I'm just saying that that's what we have been told. And this rings true as well. And one of the things I love about what you said is y'all are incorporating this in every in everything that you do, this, uh, high, high stress, uh, fast action. Because the thing that I love about that is that
most of the time, if you start going to different sizes, different locations of, uh, safes— let's say you even have one of those gorillas that you're talking about, huge massive safe in your basement, and then you've got some, you know, handgun safe in your closet, the likelihood of those having the same locking mechanism is almost nothing. Zero, right? It's, it's not going to happen. It's going to have a different locking mechanism. So if you're telling me that all of your products have the same locking mechanism, then no matter where I go, no matter what I'm doing, I don't have to fumble with that different locking mechanism. That is a huge advantage.
Well, that's, that's I mean, we do that. We want people to use Secure-It across their homes. I mean, we also, we do make conversion kits to convert traditional gun safes to our Cradle Grid system for people. If you've got a great big safe, I'm not saying throw it away.
Use the safe. But if you're truly concerned about home defense, pick up a Fast Box, pick up a small fast access safe. And, you know, I have handguns. I don't conceal carry. I don't train enough to conceal carry. I mean, you hit it on the head with your comments earlier, but I'm at a point where I made the decision. I have one in a— I've got a backpack that's designed for concealing a firearm along with laptop and all my work stuff. I keep a handgun in there, but I do not carry one. I'm not on-body carry because I don't practice enough to make those decisions.
You know, my, my mode right now is I get, I get out. Yeah, I have to get away, you know. It's, it's—
Which I think should be everybody.
I was back to shooting, going to the— I was getting to the range 3 days a week. Sure, that's, that becomes easy. And the shooting part is easy, it's decision making.
Yeah, that's the big part.
Practicing a lot. And that's that, you know, know your target and what's beyond. I've seen so many training scenarios where you got bad guys with good guys behind them in a shooting scenario, and everybody unloads on the bad guys not realizing, you know, the white targets are good guys. And you see, you see it every single time when people aren't training a lot.
Tom, with, with the, with the lock system that you have, I mean, how do you, how do you feel about like biometric locks and like RFID chips and then like electronic magnetics and all those, all those kinds of different ones that they're We have biometrics on our locks for convenience.
And the purpose for biometrics for us is if you have friends coming over and they want to see, or you want to show them your new shotgun or new rifle, you can open the safe biometrically without having to show or telegraph or hide your combination.
Biometrics should never be used in a life-or-death situation because it's, it's not what we call never-fail technology. If your hands are dirty, it won't open. If your hands are wet, it won't open. If your hands are really dry, your skin is dry, it won't open. If you're wearing gloves, it won't open. There's so many reasons that a biometric won't work that in a true firefight, we want people to train and a biometric is not faster. In the time it takes you to put your finger on there, it reads your finger and opens, I can do my combination, have the thing open. I'm faster.
Now RFID, I've posted some videos. RFID is absolutely putting you at risk. It's a dangerous technology. It has no place in the home. Okay, it's— why is that? People don't know what they're getting. And then what's happening is, so you buy a biometric or buy an RFID lock, and Hornady came out with a bunch of these, and I posted some videos. Those are good. I love Hornady. It's a great company. I use their ammo all the time.
But they're making a mistake. They don't know the space, and they're trying to make safes. So they make this— so you buy the RFID lock. I bought a bunch of them to test them.
You get the safe, and now you've got a, you know, a couple of key fobs. You've got a little thing that goes in your wallet. You've got these little credit card pieces. You got these other little stickers. You got like 6 or 7 different things that open the safe. You've just introduced key controls into your home. So now you have a safe, and you have 6 ways to open it. What do you do with these things? Because anybody that finds one of these can open your safe. Now, you put the key fobs on your keys and they hang, or if you're like, I got a key rack next to my back door, my garage, all of our keys go up there.
If you've got the little fob on your keys, if somebody breaks into your house, they see the keys, they see the little fob, it has the Hornady logo on it. If they know anything about guns, they're gonna say, oh, he's got a Hornady RapidSafe and I know where, and I've got the key. All you gotta do is walk around and find the darn thing and open it up. Kids find these things, and it's— for a kid, this is magic technology. They want to play with it. So you've got all these things to open your safe that you got to deal with. The worst part is none of these pieces are faster than just doing the combination.
Yeah. And on, on yours, is it—
Because in the time it takes you to get a fob, your keys out, even if your keys in your pocket, keys out of your pocket, the card out of your wallet, whatever the piece is, by the time you get it out and get it to the safe to open it, I've already done the combination. I already have the gun. I'm already in a high ready or a low ready position, and my eyes are up and I'm looking for threats.
And it's slow. It's a very slow way to open a safe.
You're adding all this complexity and you're adding all these key controls There's there's just no. There's not a scenario that anybody can explain to me where this makes sense, and a lot of people get these locks who aren't don't know security really well, and all those fobs and things end up just sitting in a dish somewhere in their in their closet in their bedroom. They end up sitting somewhere, and kids can get to them. Things things can happen, and things can go bad really quickly. So I don't recommend if you've got a safe. With RFID fobs, destroy them all. Just use the safe that was meant to be used.
Yeah, the only, the only ones that—
I don't like safes that design or the keypad and the locking system is part of the company logo and look where the buttons are cool shapes. I see a lot of these, like, they're trying to make them real high-tech looking. Some of the more, the more edgy, new, techie gun safes, it's like, look, The the purpose of the lock is to not let somebody in who doesn't know the combination. But if you do know the combination, is to get you into this thing in three tenths of a second. You know, it's really really fast.
And having a funky weird shaped lock, all you're you're adding complexity, you're adding difficulty, and they're doing this for vanity. And it's just again, they're not they're not thinking.
How cool can we market this? Not does this actually save someone's life? And that's again, that's just we take a different. You know, everything we do is based on our defined military methods and military protocols for weapon storage. We we defined in 2010 how an armory is supposed to work, and the military went with our design, went with our methodology, and that's this is the way that guns are stored, issued. And there's a lot more to it that we don't need to get into. It's not germane to consumer use, but a lot of time on this, and we know the space very well.
Yeah, the only thing I would add, I mean, like, just from my perspective, and like, I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, I totally agree with you on the RFIDs on the safes. The only time I've seen where they make sense to me is when it's not a safe. Do you know what I mean? when it's like a concealed piece of furniture. I don't know if you've seen these or not.
Where it's like a, it looks like a bookshelf, but it's an RFID concealed shelf kind of a thing.
That's the only time it's really, it's made sense in my brain, 'cause I just—
For me though, it's where's the fob? Where are you putting that tag? Because you have to get to the tag.
It's still slower than the, what you're talking about for sure.
Yeah, it's— but instead of RFID, I mean, I know some of them I've seen, it's just simply a magnet.
Yep, it's mechanical most of the time.
Right. You need something that is awkward and weird to do that nobody ever thinks of doing, but it opens the safe. Like, it's like secret buttons to a secret room. We've done a lot of hidden gun rooms and in homes.
I was actually gonna ask you about that, 'cause it sounds like that would be like right up your alley.
We do. It's, we build about, of our retail business, about 25% of our retail business, a little less than that, is gun rooms and gun walls. And we've done, we've built custom gun rooms for big NBA, NFL players, NASCAR, musicians. We've done a lot. We don't share a lot of information on it. In many cases, We've done some big gun rooms where we ship to a warehouse and we don't even know where the place is.
People get real, you know, they get real concerned, we'll say, about security.
I'm actually surprised you haven't gotten into guitar storage. That's where I struggle.
It's, you know, I don't have them up. I've got a few guitars behind me, but our cradle grid system for guns, if you, it's got a little, It's got cleats on the top where we have a barrel snap grip where the guns can snap into the rack. They also— you can use bungees, and with 2 bungee cords, they hold guitars. I used to have guitars hanging on the wall behind me here, a whole bunch of them, and it does work.
That's awesome. Hey, I do have a question about guitars real quick. We're probably gonna have to wrap up here in the next 10 minutes or so, just FYI, but do you know a name. Uh, he's, he's an artist called Leo Moraccioli. Are you familiar with him?
I don't know if I know that name.
Okay, so you need to look this guy up. So, um, he's Norwegian, and, uh, Leo Moraccioli, it's, it's spelled exactly like it sounds.
If you get close up with Google, that's gonna find that one.
Or if you just, you just say it into your phone and it'll look it up.
This guy, uh, he, he does covers of, of other songs in heavy metal. So I mean, he's got, he's got Happy Birthday done in, in heavy metal, but he's got, he's got, you know, songs that, that are really popular. But he, but he, he plays all the instruments, every instrument he plays. He sings all of the, uh, the songs. And he records, mixes, and produces all of the songs himself. The guy is unbelievably talented. And it, it, it's, you know, heavy metal for a lot of people is an acquired taste, right? The way he does it, it, it's just, it, it's phenomenal because it's, uh, it's marketable and, and it's, it's really well done. So I encourage you to just look him up. I think you'd have
Well, and, and so, I mean, I, I do want to— I, I, because I'm intrigued by the, the custom rooms. Are you able to use the same platforms that you're using for the military for like custom room storage? And, and absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, keep in mind, the cradle grid system is one moving part, our upper cradle, and it's, it's a patented system. It's one bracket that moves and holds, and you can hold a gun at like an M4 or AR-15 at the barrel, at the rail, at the magwell. There's different ways which positions the guns differently in the safe or on a wall to determine how much space and where's the space behind the gun. Because what our system also does then is you can drop in bins, trays, and different storage pieces to integrate all of your gear storage with your guns. So if you got an AR-15, if you build AR-15s, you've always got lots of extra pieces. All those
parts store right behind the guns. I've got odd caliber guns. My cleaning kits for those are stored right with the gun. So the security— that system just allows the integration of guns and gear. But the guns themselves, the long guns, it's one moving part. So it's very, very simple.
Handguns, we just use a simple peg system, and we've got a couple other handgun holding systems. The peg system we like in the military because if there's a round in the chamber, the gun won't seat all the way. And that's a safety thing for the military. Again, all their guns when they store them, they're all— I mean, when you're racking a gun like that, that kind of storage, they should be empty. If you've got a home defense firearm, you're going to store that differently.
Yeah, well, you're talking to the right crowd, man. I think we're living in like the gun trust capital of the world over here.
That's true. Everybody has one. And if you don't, I mean, most people have even inherited one. You know, they never even shot it or whatever.
But the one thing I will say, because when everybody owns a gun, I hear this all the time, is, well, I keep a safe for guns, but I always keep, you know, this one and that one, I don't lock them because I want to get to them.
So they put them in the closet, they put them in a drawer. I can pretty much demonstrate anywhere that a gun in a proper fast access safe is faster access than simply having a gun hidden in a drawer, hidden on a shelf.
I think it's because you're having to change the mindset of people, because when you say that, everyone goes to giant clunky safe over there that it's going to take me a long time to get to. And you're not talking about that. You're talking about these, these modular systems that you, you're, you're strategically placing them in different places of the home.
Um, and the interior of the safe, you're setting up the interior of the safe So your AR-15, when you open the door, you're going to open the door, pull it out with one arm, you're going to come up. It's one smooth motion to where you're now in a ready position with that firearm. So it's not— it's, you know, a traditional gun safe, the guns are just a mess in there.
And correct me if I'm wrong, I was— as I was looking on your website, some of yours are even like in a drawer format, correct?
Yeah, yeah. Like we have a FastBox under-bed drawer unit. We've got, you know, We just look at what are the best ways to get access to a gun. We have drawers. Our big stuff is vertical. We also do make a true safe. We call it the True Safe, which is a— we made it to prove a point for fire ratings. It is an 8-gun cement-filled, double-walled steel cement composite-filled safe.
We sell a chunk of these things. We did a fire test, like a traditional gun safe fire test. It went 2 hours and 20 minutes. Starting temperature for our test was like 94 degrees because the safe was sitting in a hot truck. Should have been 72. The safe probably would have gone 3.5 hours.
Actual fire, I'd give it probably a 20-minute rating.
All we do is when you buy that safe, we give you the spreadsheet and the chart showing This is what the data shows on this safe. But it's a beast. It's— when you buy that safe, we have a crew install it. You— we, we do not deliver to your garage and you move it. You tell us where you want it put and we put it there. It will never move. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's a monster. It can't go up wood stairs. It's, it's a—
It's got to be ground floor. Yeah.
Yeah, it's probably 1,400 pounds.
Yeah. But it's, it's a beast. But we wanted to— we made it to prove a point saying, look, if you absolutely have to have a fire rating, this is what it takes to have a fire rating. Yeah, simply lining a safe with drywall and carpeting is not fire rating. It's nonsense. It's— yeah, that's the worst part of that is the drywall, the carpeting, the adhesives they use are all banned from use in armories.
Banned from use in any museum.
Because that's Corrosion. Why does the gun safe industry sell millions of dollars of anti-corrosion products? If you properly clean and oil a gun, it's not going to— even if you live in Mississippi down by the Delta. My grandfather lived right up on the Great Lakes, very humid in the summertime. He had guns in a glass case. They never corroded. They don't rust. Yet in a gun safe, corrosion is a real problem, and they sell all these products to stop corrosion and rust. It's because drywall is very corrosive. The formaldehyde, which is in the adhesive, wildly corrosive.
And there's a whole— I've got articles published on ferroxidant bacteria, which is in drywall, pyrites in drywall. And these are all products— as these things all break down, they release sulfuric and sulfurous acids. And I tell anybody, if you go to a store that sells gun safes, have the guy open up the safe. If it's been closed for a few days, a new safe, put your nose in there as it opens. You'll smell sulfur.
That's sulfurous and sulfuric acids.
If you have— I tell everybody, if you have a traditional gun safe, open the door and vent it every couple of months.
That's all you got to do is just— you got to just circulate the air because the pyrite is going to break down. That corrosion process in drywall lasts probably 300 years. Oh my gosh.
It's not something that dissipates in a week.
This is a slow process of bacteria eating pyrite in the drywall, releasing toxic products. So it's a—
The whole industry, we're, we're hoping we can get the whole industry to change.
you're on the right track, I think, man.
There's, there's a lot of things you've got going right. And my, my, one of my kind of parting questions here, Tom, is if people wanna get ahold of you, how's the best way to get ahold of you?
Just Google Securit, one word, S-E-C-U-R-I-T, Securit. We're all over the web. You can Google my name. I've got a pretty big digital presence. And, you know, one of the pieces for us that we pride ourselves on, we are considered having the best customer service and the best tech support in the industry.
I've got a big staff and my tech support has the authority to do whatever it takes to solve problems. And I tell people, have questions, just call us. We answer the phone. We, we actually, you know, it's not an AI, you know, BS answer, press 2 for this kind of stuff. It's— we're people who know gun safes and gun storage really well.
That's awesome. Well, I think, uh, I think there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be listening to this that could be interested in that. So I, I really appreciate the time. And, um, you know, there, there are probably We need to have you back on. There's more that we need to talk about. So if you're open to it, we would love to, uh, to have you back sometime. So, um, absolutely.
My, uh, just send me an e-invite and I am there. I love doing podcasts.
Well, thank you so much. Uh, thank you for all our listeners who are out there and, uh, the people watching online. If you've not already subscribed to our channel, please do so. You can find us anywhere on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. I don't know where else. Everywhere. Yeah.
The interwebs. And yeah, shoot us an email, info@homeownersshow.com. Thank you for all you do. Talk to you later.
