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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