About Us

Vapensystems founders Martin Dijkema and Richard Meier have extensive experience in high-security safe design and the weapons industry. They have spent years installing, cracking, testing, and manufacturing safes as well as designing weapon components and systems.

Some years ago, Martin was in a safe dealer’s warehouse discussing high-security jewelry safes with the owner and asked about several safes in his warehouse that had beautiful automotive paint finish. The safe dealer responded “those aren’t really safes,” as they were gun safes and he explained that any safe cracker or experienced amateur could break most of them open in 5 minutes. In his view, gun safe manufacturers spent too much money on the wrong stuff: a pretty paint job, doors that appear thick but are made with thin sheet metal, lots of protruding bolts to impress the uninitiated, and an unnecessarily big handle on the front.

 It was obvious the companies that manufactured these safes didn’t consider that weapons get moved in and out them continually and therefore need to be designed with that in mind. Additionally, the combination of modern tools (cheap carbide drill bits and battery powered drills) and readily available information (YouTube how-to videos) had made it very easy to crack open these products. The average buyer was generally not aware that they weren’t buying real security when buying a gun safe.

 Several years later, Martin and Richard, now partners in a defense contracting company developing military equipment, began brainstorming ideas about a new kind of gun safe. Rich had experience in the gun industry and had developed several after-market components for the Glock in the 1990s; he felt dissatisfied with the way that gun safe interiors are designed—most, if not all, looking like they belonged in a 1950s western movie and were out of sync with current weapons technology. Safe interiors at the time were often still made from wood and covered in carpeting and were not user friendly in terms of access, especially in an emergency. Even in the larger safes, access to the contents was difficult; trying to remove one long rifle from the rear of the safe often required removing all of the contents first.

That discussion kicked off a long and careful design process that led to the development of the Vapensystems QVR, QVRT, and THOR.

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Our knowledge of design and specifically of safe and weapons design has led to a product with extremely high security, fast and easy access to the contents, and the ability to place the units in locations where normally a safe can not be placed.

Our many decades of experience designing, developing, and manufacturing safes and weapons, as well as thousands of hours spent designing, prototyping, testing, and redesigning have resulted in a greatly superior and attractive range of gun safes unmatched by any other in the industry.