Several months ago I saw a new quick access handgun "safe"/holster in a news report from the 2019 Shot Show in Las Vegas some of you might find interesting.
The Vara Safety Reach immediately caught my attention because I needed a security solution that would allow me to keep a pistol out of the big iron gun safe and be instantly accessible without fumbling with keys in the dark.
Keeping a handgun on, or in, my night stand is not an option because I must keep it reasonably secure due to occasional visitors. I have previously tried using a couple of different lock boxs, one with a keypad and the other with a fingerprint reader. The first is not acceptable because you can't see the keypad in the dark. On the bio-metric box, the fingerprint reader just plain sucks, sometimes taking many attempts before it would unlock.
So, I pre-ordered the Vara Safety Reach way back in February knowing it was still a work in progress and would not be shipped until mid-August. (if it ever shipped all) As it turned out, it didn't ship until mid-September.
On first glance it doesn't look like much of a "safe", but I decided to give it a try. Installation is easy, only four screws and a charger to keep the battery charged. Then you have to teach it your fingerprint(s). That part took a little longer since I thought I was smart enough to do it without reading the manual. It turns out the manual beat me on smarts. Finally, I had everything assembled and inserted the gun.
At that point, I decided it was not really a "safe", but more of a fairly secure place to keep a gun as long as you don't plan on leaving it alone for extended periods. Just like any lock, this "safe" is designed to keep honest folks honest and to make it too difficult for a child to obtain and fire the gun.
Parts of the "safe" are plastic that I know I could defeat fairly easily. That would allow me to take the gun, but not fire it. Firing it would require more intensive work to remove it from the "holster" and access the trigger. The part I am least confident in is the mount itself. It is made of plastic and the company claim it can withstand 200 lbs. of force which isn't much. They have made that better by shipping me a metal mount replacement. I hope to see it in a couple of days.
The "safe" is opened by scanning your fingerprint or fingerprints. The manufacturer states the "safe" will unlock in 0.50 seconds. I found it to be hit or miss on getting it opened quickly and that defeats half of the reason I purchased it.
The manual has a trouble shooting section that says something to the extent that very dry skin can be hard for the scanner to read. They suggested to keep your fingers moisturized with skin lotion. That is not a good solution for me, but did give me an idea. I tried licking the print area on my thumb, and wiped any excess off. It works great! Just the slight moisture from the lick opens the lock very quickly.
If anyone is interested in an expensive, fairly secure "safe" this might work for you. The idea is great, but the materials need to be more rugged before I remove the quotation marks from the word "safe".
Added on edit: I posted the above criticism about the low security before I saw the video below. It looks like I need to rethink that. I still know I can defeat it by prying it off the mount. But you still have to get it out of the "safe" after prying it off of the mount.
https://www.varasafety.com/
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...Ben
