Federal safety regulators have now flagged biometric gun safes from at least six different brands after discovering that the fingerprint locks can be opened by anyone, not just the registered owner. The recalls and warnings cover more than 190,000 units sold at retailers including Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Cabela’s, Bass Pro, and Lowe’s. One child has died, another was severely injured, and more than 150 incidents of unauthorized access have been logged across the affected product lines.
Six brands, one failure pattern, and a dead child
The scale of this problem is what sets it apart from a routine product recall. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued separate actions against Fortress Safe, Awesafe, Bulldog Cases, Machir, SA Consumer Products, and Stack-On, all for the same core defect: biometric locks that can be defeated by unauthorized users, including children. The fact that six distinct brands share the same vulnerability raises a pointed question about whether the flaw sits in a common third-party fingerprint module rather than in any single company’s software.
The largest single action involved SA Consumer Products, which recalled approximately 133,370 units of its Sanctuary Quick Access and Sports Afield biometric gun safes after receiving 77 reports of unauthorized access. Fortress Safe recalled roughly 61,000 units under recall number 24-011, with one death reported, after federal investigators found that certain biometric models could be opened by unregistered users. Awesafe-imported safes logged 71 incidents of unauthorized opening, prompting a CPSC notice covering tens of thousands of products sold online. Bulldog Cases reported four incidents before recalling certain biometric gun safes that could also be opened by unauthorized users. Machir recalled biometric personal safes that could store firearms as well as valuables. And in the most recent action, the CPSC issued an urgent stop-use warning for Stack-On biometric gun safes after a five-year-old child in Michigan was severely injured when able to access a firearm.
CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. tied several of these products directly to major retailers, stating that malfunctioning gun safes sold by Cabela’s, Bass Pro, and Lowe’s allow anyone to open them, and that one child had died as a result. That statement framed the issue not as an isolated defect but as a systemic retail safety failure in which big-box stores and online marketplaces helped distribute products that did not reliably keep guns locked away from children.
A shared biometric flaw across unrelated manufacturers
Each CPSC recall notice describes the hazard in nearly identical terms: the biometric programming feature can default to an open mode or otherwise fail without alerting the owner, letting any person, including a child, open the safe. In some cases, the safes reportedly opened for unregistered fingerprints; in others, the programming could be lost or corrupted, leaving the safe in a state where almost any touch would trigger an unlock.
This language appears across brands that are otherwise unrelated in ownership and manufacturing. Fortress Safe units were sold at Cabela’s, Bass Pro, and Lowe’s. Awesafe-imported safes were sold at Walmart and Amazon. SA Consumer Products units were sold at Costco and other national chains. Bulldog Cases and Machir products were distributed through sporting-goods outlets and online sellers. The price range across these products ran roughly $100 to $300, placing them squarely in the mass-market tier where cost pressure on components is highest and where many buyers may assume that a biometric label guarantees a higher level of security than a simple key lock.
The hypothesis that a shared third-party biometric module is the common point of failure has not been confirmed or denied by the CPSC in any of its public recall documents. None of the notices name a specific component supplier or fingerprint sensor manufacturer, and the agency has not released a teardown analysis showing whether the internal hardware is identical across brands. But the identical failure mode across six brands, each with different importers and retail channels, strongly suggests a supply-chain problem rather than six independent coding errors producing the same result. Budget biometric gun safes in this price range typically source fingerprint readers and control boards from a small number of overseas suppliers, making a shared-module explanation plausible even without official confirmation.
That possibility has implications beyond the specific SKUs now under recall. If a common sensor or control board is flawed, other models using the same module could be vulnerable even if they have not yet generated enough complaints to trigger an investigation. It also raises questions about how rigorously importers and retailers test biometric performance before putting their brand names on a safe and marketing it as a child-resistant storage solution.
What owners should do now and what regulators have not answered
The CPSC’s remedy instructions vary by brand but share a common thread: stop relying on the fingerprint lock immediately. For Bulldog Cases units, the agency directed owners to request a repair kit or replacement safe. For Awesafe products, the remedy was to disable the biometric feature entirely and use the backup key instead. For Fortress Safe, consumers were told to stop using the biometric function and contact the company for a free replacement or full refund, depending on the model. For Stack-On safes, the CPSC went further than a standard recall, issuing a direct consumer warning to stop using the biometric feature after evaluating the safes and finding the programming can fail silently.
Anyone who owns a biometric gun safe purchased in the affected price range should check the model number against the CPSC recall listings and, as a first step, switch to a backup locking method such as a key or keypad code until the biometric issue is resolved. Consumers can search for their specific product on the federal recall database at recalls.gov, and they should register for recall notifications when that option is offered by the manufacturer so that future safety notices are not missed.
Gun owners who discover that their model is covered by a recall should follow the manufacturer’s instructions exactly, which may include removing batteries, applying a disabling kit to the fingerprint reader, or shipping the unit back for a replacement. In households with children, regulators and safety advocates stress that firearms should be unloaded before storage and that ammunition should be stored separately, even when a safe is believed to be functioning properly. The incidents tied to these recalls underline how quickly a child can access a gun when a lock fails, leaving little or no time for an adult to intervene.
Several questions remain open. The CPSC has not published test data or video showing exactly how quickly an unauthorized user can bypass the fingerprint lock, though the recall language describes a default-to-open condition that would require no technical skill at all. The agency has not detailed whether environmental factors such as low battery power, temperature, or repeated failed attempts make the failures more likely, or whether the flaw is purely a programming issue baked into the control board.
Regulators have also not said whether they will pursue broader rulemaking for biometric firearm storage devices, such as minimum performance standards or mandatory third-party testing before products can be advertised as child-resistant. Right now, biometric gun safes largely rely on voluntary standards and manufacturer claims, leaving buyers with little independent data about false-accept rates or how a safe behaves when its electronics malfunction.
For consumers, the recalls are a reminder that convenience features can create new failure points, especially when implemented at the lowest possible cost. Fingerprint readers promise fast access for the owner, but in these cases they may have delivered even faster access for curious children and other unauthorized users. Until regulators and manufacturers can demonstrate that budget biometric safes reliably fail in the locked position, many safety experts argue that mechanical locks, higher-end models with documented testing, or layered security measures remain the safer choice for keeping guns out of the wrong hands.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
