America’s Surge In Gun Sales And A Revolutionary Way To Store Them

Several years ago, I produced a TV special for Discovery’s Destination America network called Armageddon Arsenals, a gritty take on the doomsday prepper craze that continues to sweep the world—especially in the aftermath of the global pandemic.

The documentary examined the why’s and how’s of people who figured lead (in the form of bullets) was more valuable than gold and silver in the event of a societal meltdown. I recall walking into one man’s weapons cache with seven gun safes (a good start, as they say in Texas), and he began to open the locked vaults, pulling out his favorite weapons for defending his ranch from everything short of Martians. What struck me at the time is how long it took him to dig through the safes to find his favorite pieces. I remembered thinking, zombies just aren’t going to give him that much time.

It's the same problem I’ve had with my own safes over the years, for accessing the right gun for the job often entails removing several firearms before you get to the one you need. In the meantime, it’s not uncommon to knock one gun into another, beginning a domino effect where guns tumble into one another, leaving dents and scratches on the wood of heirloom quail or partridge shotguns.

Like many hunters, my collection is as non-denominational as my sporting pursuits. When your hunting interests are varied, man cannot hunt with one gun alone. Some require scopes and suppressors, which frequently presents a challenge for traditional gun safes that often don’t accommodate a variety of firearms (and accessories) equally.

With gun sales skyrocketing over the last decade, there are now an estimated 425 to 475 million guns in America. India, with 1.44 billion souls, comes in a distant second to the U.S. in firearm ownership at 71 million guns in civilian hands. With the astronomical surge in American gun ownership—more than 17 million purchased in 2022 alone—there is an unprecedented need to store them…securely.

For Tom Kubiniec, a recovering rock guitarist turned gun storage savant who serves as CEO of SecureIt, a pioneering company that is transforming gun storage and safety, there has long been a glaring need to rethink gun security in America. He speaks in almost evangelistic tones when advocating for gun safety and security. “Traditional gun safes simply don’t address the needs that most gun owners have,” he says. “They want their guns secured from those who shouldn’t have access to them, but they want the right people to access both the guns and their many accessories easily.”

In 2008, the U.S. Army Special Forces Command called Kubiniec to help them transform their cluttered weapons racks into organized, weapons storage systems. The outcome was a newly conceived approach to weapons security and access, remaking military, and law enforcement armories across the country and, indeed, the globe. Today, he’s taken what he’s honed over decades of working with the military and is applying it to the much larger civilian marketplace, for the burgeoning sporting, recreational shooting and home defense categories have had few options other than traditional, metal-boxed gun safes.

The secret to Kubiniec and SecureIt’s success has been changing the way America fundamentally thinks about gun storage and home defense. His full line of customizable, lightweight, modular gun storage solutions and accessories is a significant turn in the evolution of gun safes and firearm security. And his timing couldn’t have been better given the nationwide run on firearms and surge in first-time gun owners.

At the core of his motivation is gun safety. “It’s our responsibility as gun owners to make sure no one who shouldn’t have access to a gun can get their hands on one,” he says.

“From hunting to recreational shooting to personal defense, firearms are an important and celebrated part of the American culture,” says Kubiniec. “Our customers love their guns, and they want the peace of mind that their firearms are secured when not in use.”

When you walk into a room with a SecureIt gun wall or gun room, it’s clear that you’re witnessing a new day in firearm storage. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the gap between SecureIt’s line and traditional gun safes is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. It’s little wonder why gun owners who see and experience Secureit’s many options are trading in their old- line, metal box gun safes of yesteryear for something that looks like it’s straight out of The Matrix.

Kubiniec knows that once gun owners experience his products, they want them. “We patented CradleGrid technology, developed under contract with the U.S. Army Special Forces,” he says, “and to fully understand the system and why SecureIt is now the global leader in military weapon storage, you really need to interact with it.”

That’s why he’s launching a series of experience centers across the country. As a direct-to-consumer company, the centers will give customers the ability to appreciate the full line of the company’s gun storage systems before determining what products might best fit their needs.

Part of this will include what he calls, Beyond the Gun training. “We’ve created a curriculum to teach gun owners the principles of decentralized gun storage, and how to train with your safe for fast access.”

The idea stems from what Kubiniec sees as a gap in American firearm instruction. “Almost all firearm training starts with a gun in your hand or in a holster,” he says. “Yet most people do not carry a firearm when at home. It is typically locked in a safe. With proper awareness, training, and practice, you can access firearms from a secured safe in less than 1.5 seconds. We can demonstrate that it is even faster than accessing an unsecured firearm from a closet or other hidden location.”

Currently, training facilities at Arizona’s popular GunSite Academy and Virginia’s Paramount Tactical (near Washington D.C.) are home to SecureIt’s inaugural experience centers. Kubiniec expects to have eight such centers operating by late 2025, with future locations likely to be in Orlando, Las Vegas, Myrtle Beach, Colorado, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.

“Gun storage in America has been static for nearly 75 years and we aim to change that,” he says. “And our new experience centers are giving people the opportunity to better understand the relationship between storage, security, safety, and home defense. About 15 years ago, SecureIt changed the way the military looks at weapon and gear storage. Now, we’re doing the same thing in the civilian market.”