First Gear | Safety Tech That Works From Hornady

This weekend, “First Gear” joins the America’s 1^st Freedom lineup to bring you more early or insightful looks at the accouterments of true liberty.

The mainstream media has created more than a little hullabaloo of late when it comes to so-called “smart” technology and firearms. For the most part, this blather takes the all-too-familiar form of a dictatorial patois—equal parts willed ignorance and wishful thinking—and is similarly heedless in its dismissal of what actually works when it comes to firearms safety.

It needn’t be so, and we don’t know of any current product that demonstrates this quite like the Hornady RAPiD® Safe.

We won’t linger on the details too much: Suffice it to say that we found virtually everything perfected with the RAPiD® Safe. For starters, and unlike most predecessors, it really is rapid. With just a little practice—and yes, you should absolutely practice with a device like this as with all other aspects of firearms use—a defensive pistol can be retrieved in under two seconds. Yes, you read that correctly—actually retrieved. Using any one of the four supplied RFID “keys” (two stickers, a wristband and a key ring [or pendant] fob), you swipe a clearly marked roughly 2.6 cubic inch volume of space, and the trim clamshell opens with alacrity.

It’s that easy. Note that while there is a keyed back-up entry capacity, the technology doesn’t depend on this fine motor task to be performed under stress. Also, there is no button pushing that, if mishandled, must wait for some sort of time-out and then be restarted from the beginning with all that fine motor complexity still looming. Instead, your “target” is only slightly smaller than a business card, and three-dimensional. The boundaries of that target can even be tactilely illuminated in the dark.So the next time the media—or some well-meaning but ignorant friend—insists that gun owners or the NRA are against technology, you might share a few RAPiD^® Safe details.

Hornady was considerate enough to program our sample, but yours won’t come that way. Perhaps oddly, that constitutes some added good news. We reset ours to test an enduring pet peeve—documentation that is overly terse or just plain wrong—but found ourselves completely thwarted. A total of eight concise steps completed both the full reset and subsequent re-sync of our RFID keys to the safe, and only three of those really mattered. It’s so easy a caveman … er, nevermind.

We also confirmed with Hornady that a single fob can be programmed to open multiple boxes, a key—ahem—benefit for some users. If this befuddles you a little, consider: The same fob would work for a RAPiD® Safe at the office, in your vehicle and in your home. Better still, a single safe could be programmed for multiple valid users (as many as five), yet not compromise access to a private safe, and all without sorting out which fob works which box when time is perhaps at a dangerous premium.

Best of all, the RAPiD® Safe works with every family heirloom or brand new firearm it is dimensionally compatible with. It doesn’t pit a serious caliber, g-force, moisture intolerance or other simply unknown factors against your need for rapid access to a defensive firearm. 

So the next time the media—or some well-meaning but ignorant friend—insists that gun-owners or the NRA are against technology, you might share a few RAPiD® Safe details. In this important respect, we think the Hornady solution is a potential giant-killer.