Does anybody else make pic inventory of their guns?

[M88]

2wheelwander, that's a pretty nifty comprehensive book. Looks like it holds all the data you would need etc. Ten years ago I would have gotten something like that. As I got pulled into the electronic digital world (kicking and screaming) I did eventually realize the value of having something in the cloud, or at least on several hard drives somewhere, instead of on one physical book that could burn in a fire, and is only accessible wherever it physically is. The added benefit of being able to pull that phone from my pocket and pull up any information about my guns, serial numbers, pics, range data.. anything, was pretty appealing. Even more so being able to ADD to that digital file from that phone or laptop anywhere there was cell service or WiFi. If I really need a hard paper copy I just print it out. I suppose you could put those printouts in a notebook and still have a physical file you can hold and page through, but personally I don't bother with that. Anyway, I fully understand that approach is not for everybody. For me the ability to access and add to my gun file from anywhere was pretty appealing and that's what I now do. In fact, not just guns, but all data or info about everything from my car maintenance to health information is now digital, in an iPhone Note or WORD file, in the cloud (DropBox etc) so it's accessible from my phone or laptop from anywhere.

 

[M88]

DaleA you are very correct, taking quality pics of guns is not as simple as it seems. Lighting, shadows, glare from lights, shadows from you hovering over the gun to take the picture... it isn't seamless. I spent several hours experimenting with lighting, where to place the gun, where to stand to take the picture, how many lights around it etc. Actually taking pics outside using natural light works well if it's an overcast day without the Sun glaring from one angle. I'm sure on a forum like this somebody has posted info about that. I kinda learned by making a thousand mistakes, seeing what works and what doesn't. Another thing I learned is having a fairly decent camera that can take pics in relatively low light without a flash (very high ASA). A flash simply reflects off of any shiny part of the gun and you get a gun with lots of bright spots. Experiment and try not to get frustrated like I do! Also, when it comes to taking pics of the serial number, again you need a good auto-focusing camera that can either zoom in close, or has a high enough pixel count that you can take a pic from several feet away and when you crop that s/n out and enlarge it still looks good. Obviously this subject can't be covered in a little post, whole books have been written about how to photograph objects.

 

[kenny53]

Does anybody else make pic inventory of their guns?
No I haven't but I think it is a good idea. I have a list of S/N's
but I have done that so the kids know where I want to guns to go when I tip over.

 

[osbornk]

Remember when video cameras first came out people who owned them made a little extra money by videoing a families valuables and giving them the video tape.
Several of you said for insurance purposes, do you have a special rider covering them? My standard homeowners policy will only pay a max of $2500. You should check out your coverage.

Read your insurance policy again regarding the limit on firearms. I handled large claims for fires, arson and theft for many years and I cheated a lot of people because I didn't read the policy properly. On most policies, the $2,500 limit on firearms applies only to theft. You have coverage up the policy limit on fire and other types of losses.

When I had a questionable fire loss, the first thing I looked for was the remains of the policy holder's firearms. I also looked for the remains of jewelry and family photos. I don't recall ever having an intentional fire where the firearms, jewelry and personal photos were destroyed. With legitimate fires, if they had guns, I was always able to find the barrels with serial numbers in the debris.

It's also a good idea, in addition to taking photos of your guns and receipts, to walk through your house and record the contents in general (open the drawers, closets, etc) . In addition to providing the insurance company evidence of what you have, it will help you remember what you own if you have a total loss. Put the information on a thumb drive and keep a copy in your car or another place separate from your house so it will not be damaged.

 

[M88]

Put the information on a thumb drive and keep a copy in your car or another place separate from your house so it will not be damaged.

Agree that it's always a good idea to put a COPY of your vid, pic or Word file containing your gun information (or any other important info) in whatever media, be it portable hard drive, thumb drive or even a little SD card... in another place other than your house. Personally I don't like the idea of keeping it in my car because a brick through a window and they potentially have all my info. Even if it's encrypted, that has proven to not be foolproof protection. A buddy of mine put all his gun information and house contents on a thumb drive, wrapped it it plastic sealed against water, put that in a small jar and sealed that with wax, and buried it in his back yard. THAT would work but sheeeesh, why go to all that trouble? At least until the apocalypse (oh NO!) an easy very reliable place is the cloud. Many are free for the first couple GB of storage, which is way plenty for storing gun info, even if it's a short vid of the contents of your house. Dropbox is one that I use, 2GB are free. You can then access all your gun info and everything else from any computer or smartphone anywhere there is WiFi or cell service. I still do keep a physical copy of it on a thumb drive in one of my my gun safes where it's protected by fire to a point. I update it every month or so, or when I have a large purchase or new gun. Yup that can be little hassle, but for me it's peace of mind. As per my original post, I was wondering how many gun owners do this or something similar.

 

[sirgilligan]

Yes I do. I wrote an app to do it. I started out documenting a semi-auto that was malfunctioning. I needed a log so I could track the ammo, the magazines, etc trying to diagnose the problem. I did it on paper of course, but as a programmer I decided to make me a range log for iPod touch. That was a long time ago now.Once I made the app it was obvious that it was a log book of firearms and ammo as well so I made the app do a bit more for inventory, and specifically the ability to generate PDF or just plain PNG image reports for a firearm so that I could print it and put it in a safe place.

Then the ones that just use it as a range log complained, "I don't want to enter my serial number!". For some reason it seems that some people can't stand to leave out information on a form! But you can enter as little or as much as you want, nothing is required. And it does not use cloud storage (unless you backup your entire iOS device to the cloud) so your data is only on the one device. If you want to move your data from an iPhone to an iPad you have to plug them into a computer and do a file transfer.

 

[osbornk]

Agree that it's always a good idea to put a COPY of your vid, pic or Word file containing your gun information (or any other important info) in whatever media, be it portable hard drive, thumb drive or even a little SD card... in another place other than your house. Personally I don't like the idea of keeping it in my car because a brick through a window and they potentially have all my info. Even if it's encrypted, that has proven to not be foolproof protection. A buddy of mine put all his gun information and house contents on a thumb drive, wrapped it it plastic sealed against water, put that in a small jar and sealed that with wax, and buried it in his back yard. THAT would work but sheeeesh, why go to all that trouble? At least until the apocalypse (oh NO!) an easy very reliable place is the cloud. Many are free for the first couple GB of storage, which is way plenty for storing gun info, even if it's a short vid of the contents of your house. Dropbox is one that I use, 2GB are free. You can then access all your gun info and everything else from any computer or smartphone anywhere there is WiFi or cell service. I still do keep a physical copy of it on a thumb drive in one of my my gun safes where it's protected by fire to a point. I update it every month or so, or when I have a large purchase or new gun. Yup that can be little hassle, but for me it's peace of mind. As per my original post, I was wondering how many gun owners do this or something similar.

What are the odds that someone will break into your car, find an unmarked thumb drive, open it and find your gun information on it. Even if they did, what good would it do them? Hopefully, you have your guns secure from anyone breaking into your house. Odds are that if you are home, a fire would not burn it to the ground and if you are not at home, the odds are that you will be in your car. Besides, if your home is totally burned, you have the evidence of ownership of the guns because the serial number will be on the burned barrels.

 

[KyJim]

I made a customized database to inventory my firearms and then expanded it to include tracking magazines used in each gun and malfunctions in each gun/magazine (this is primarily for 1911s). I include a photo of each gun and back up the data to a thumb drive. I've been meaning to back it up to a cloud drive but need to invest in a larger cloud drive.

 

[M88]

What are the odds that someone will break into your car, find an unmarked thumb drive, open it and find your gun information on it. Even if they did, what good would it do them?

Depending on where you live and where you have to leave your car parked, probably pretty slim. Could they do something with that gun data even if they do put a brick through my window and find that thumb drive? Some of us live in the city where a car is blocks away on a back street with little or no lighting. Not as "slim" as somebody in a gated community or who lives on a farm. The real danger is that if it does get broken into they now have your address from the registration in the glove box. If they do find the thumb drive and look at it, they now have valuable information from a criminal perspective. They now know where lots of guns are all in one spot. Something they could potentially pass on to other criminals. They may not think that the guns are in a safe that the average criminal couldn't get into, they just know that in THAT house there are many guns to steal and sell for serious money on the black market. A target I would rather not anybody I don't know, know. Unless I lived on a farm somewhere out in rural country, that's not a chance I'm willing to take unless I have to, and therefor I don't. Simple as that.

 

[unclejack37]

Yes, photos and information on each gun is a good idea. I have a couple of personal computers and I have a copy of pictures and gun ID on each along with hard copies in a safe locations. Between home owners insurance and the NRA I think as long as I can prove ownership I will be reimbursed if lost or stolen.

 

[AmmunitionDepot]

I have always just kept an inventory of my personal firearms, but this is a really good additional precaution. I need to start taking some pictures.

 

[osbornk]

Depending on where you live and where you have to leave your car parked, probably pretty slim. Could they do something with that gun data even if they do put a brick through my window and find that thumb drive? Some of us live in the city where a car is blocks away on a back street with little or no lighting. Not as "slim" as somebody in a gated community or who lives on a farm. The real danger is that if it does get broken into they now have your address from the registration in the glove box. If they do find the thumb drive and look at it, they now have valuable information from a criminal perspective. They now know where lots of guns are all in one spot. Something they could potentially pass on to other criminals. They may not think that the guns are in a safe that the average criminal couldn't get into, they just know that in THAT house there are many guns to steal and sell for serious money on the black market. A target I would rather not anybody I don't know, know. Unless I lived on a farm somewhere out in rural country, that's not a chance I'm willing to take unless I have to, and therefor I don't. Simple as that.

I'm sure there are criminals that break into cars, take the time to dig through glove boxes, consoles and door pockets to steal unmarked thumb drives, then take them to a computer to see what is on them so they can go to your house where the address is on the registration card and steal your guns.

 

[ChasHam]

.....So I photocopy all gun receipts to a file, which then gets put in a folder in the cloud. I also take several pics of each gun, including one of the serial number, and store them in the cloud also.

I keep a detailed encrypted firearms record too- plus an off-premises backup. But I've always been skittish about putting important personal info in "the cloud".

Seems a week doesn't go by without reports of this or that big company's servers being breached and tons of confidential personal data stolen.

 

[M88]

Seems a week doesn't go by without reports of this or that big company's servers being breached and tons of confidential personal data stolen.

I hear that, and as an electronics tech for 30 years working where I had to deal with IT people every day, hearing as seeing how vulnerable these systems CAN be, I also was squeamish and didn't trust any server located God knows where that was not under my complete control. After talking a few years ago with an IT guy who manages a pretty large investment company however, I felt a little better about it. Of course all HIS stuff is super encrypted. My stuff is just password protected, but he convinced me that these days, most major cloud services like Google, Apple or DropBox are pretty dang safe. You are umpteen orders of magnitude more likely to have YOUR computer hacked into to get to that data. Also, any criminal element that is sophisticated enough to break into THOSE major cloud services is NOT going to bother with some guys gun information, they're after much more lucrative targets. These multi-national companies have billions at stake, and have some very serous security, which because they have to stay on top of things, is continually being improved. THAT said... sure... nothing short of a single, not backed up anywhere, physical file locked in a heavy safe that only you have the combo to, is absolutely 100% safe.

 

[OneFreeTexan]

On my IPad, I use an app “Gun Log SPC”. I think it only cost a couple bucks, has room for everything including how the gun has been maintained, shot, cleaned, etc,....pricing,,,,seems like everything one needs to know, and yes, room for lots of pictures.

I do like the OP’s picture with the ammo to be used in the gun,,, good idea, and the ruler in the picture is good too. If you’re going to take a picture do it up right,