If you travel with guns, sooner or later you think about a gun vault. The ones above are some good examples. Most full and mid size SUVs will take a 48″ wide box behind the second row seats. I have built a couple of these for Expeditions, Suburbans and a few other mid size SUVs. Done correctly, it’s practically invisible from the outside and covers the state laws about transporting firearms inside a truck or SUV.
Commercial vaults can run $1200 or more. If you are the least bit handy, you can make your own. I built this one for a trip to San Antonio. Gun theft is rampant there as it’s the home of the Skeet and Sporting Clays associations and they have a couple of 5 day tournaments there. It’s well publicized and the criminals know there are hundreds of high end shotguns on the grounds. Restaurant and hotel parking lots are also hit often. The construction is pretty simple; it’s a box with a door. I built mine in an afternoon. Understand that truck and SUV vaults are not theft proof; the goal is to make it not worth the time or exposure to do it. My current vault is built out of two sheets of 1/2″ 4×4′ cabinet grade plywood, 3 1×6″ pine boards, and a 1×6″ oak board for the door. It’s screwed together with #8 2″ deck screws. Trust me, hinge the door from the bottom. The locks on the first run were simple cabinet locks, but once they were installed I didn’t like them that much, so the third photo shows the boat hatch locks I replaced them with later.
I finished the top of mine with a piece of a truck bed liner. If you are doing this in a pickup truck it’s a must if you really want a waterproof box. Be advised it’s recommended to use treated plywood if you are building one for a pickup bed without a topper. I generally transport my guns in hard cases so I didn’t want drawers; I just needed a place to get them out of sight. It’s basically a second story for an SUV deck.
Some of my friends have built everything from mild to wild – with slide out tables, or workbenches from the bottom, or full length drawers on teflon sliders. I can get either 2 guns in hard cases, or 4 guns in soft cases, plus 3 cases of shotgun shells in mine.