Sarah,

I have many years experience with historic firearms in museums and teach an
online course on "Care and Conservation of Historic Firearms" (I'll be
offering it again in June) and I have done assessments on museum firearms
collections.

First, if you have live ammunition, it should be stored in a secure area
away from people. In case of a fire ammunition and ordinance will sometimes
go off (not all the time, but it is a serious issue). When doing an
emergency plan you should always invite your fire department to do an
inspection / walk-through. They can not only offer advice but they do need
to know about ammunition as well as an flammable chemicals in your facility
- that is both for their safety should they have to respond to a fire
there, as well as your safety.

You do not need to take extra precautions with firearms than any other
collections objects in your collections. You DO need to check those
firearms to make sure that they are not loaded. I have found a number of
loaded firearms in museum collections that the staff was not aware of. That
is a safety issue for staff that should be addressed outside of the
emergency plan.

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Senior Conservator & Museum Consultant
Los Angeles CA  USA
www.cityofangelsconservation.weebly.com

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On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Sarah Saxe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hello All
>
> I'm updating our emergency plan and need to include a section on firearms
> and munitions in the collections.  Does anyone have a section in their plan
> and/or collections policy that they wouldn't mind sharing with me?  Or
> perhaps share links to other institutions' plans that address
> firearms/munitions?
>
> Thanks very much,
>
> Sarah Saxe
> Curator of Collections, City of Greeley Museums
>
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