Basement Vaults for Dummy Gun Owners

Basement gun vault

We run across some pretty... what, mindless? instructions from time to time in our research, but the cream of the crap seems to come from liberal arts majors who've attempted to tackle a DIY project far, far, far beyond their personal experience and capabilities. Take, for instance, eHowian Ezmeralda Lee; who took on the assignment to explain "How to Build a Gun Vault in the Basement"¹ back when she was still Civita Dyer. It's now at GoneOutdoors.com...

Since Ezmeralda/Civita was required to introduce her topic, she went to the "Why would you do this," tossing in some high-falutin'-sounding words:

"With the increased awareness in gun safety protocols and regulations there is a need for a quality-constructed gun vault. This is to ensure that safety is a top priority in homes containing a variety of firearms and weapons. You can construct a quality vault to house your firearms, ammunition, and accessories in a safe place, free from the hands of unwanted users and intruders. Building in the basement means you will be able to include a safe room, if you choose."

We aren't sure, but we suspect the whole "safe room" bit is to give her a higher word count... but never mind that. It was the quality of Ez's instructions that caught our staffer's eye, details like,

• "Construct a wall of interlocking cinder blocks according to mason's standards so that you have a three walled enclosure which is reinforced in three areas with rebar and poured Portland cement." – Reinforced in just three areas? Really?
• "Remember to set each layer of blocks with equal amounts of mortar so that it remains plum [sic] and level..." – Should you use a pear of tools in your work, Civita?
• "Complete the ceiling of the enclosure by pouring cement as the structure's roof." – That whole ceiling step is gonna be hard to do in a basement and still make a "safe room."

And then there's this stupidification:

"Drill through the roof of the enclosure to allow air to circulate within the room with the door closed."

Yeah, sure, that'll work, especially if you do "allow the concrete ceiling to cure prior to completing this task."

We have no idea where Civita/Ezmeralda came up with these instructions,² but it's pretty obvious from the whole "ceiling" discussion that you can't retrofit your "gun vault/safe room" into an existing basement; the original instructions (if, in fact, there were any) must have been for designing a room in the basement; maybe even a tornado shelter.

This is a prime example of the sort of English Lit BA instructions that made eHow the laughingstock of the aughties and led Google to develop the Panda algorithm to de-emphasize content farms. They were trying to de-emphasize the Dumbass of the Day, too...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_4600174_build-gun-vault-basement.html
² Probably from a wordpress blog that no longer exists, written by someone to whom Charlton Heston was a "celebrity" instead of a bona fide nutjob.

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