Gosh, it’s just so inconvenient to take 2 minutes to lock up a gun.

If you're claiming you want the firearm for "self defense", then it really is. If someone surprises you at home, you can't just say "wait a sec while I get my gun from its safe". 1poormom kept her .22 wrapped in a gun cloth in her night stand. I knew enough not to mess with it (firearm safety was drilled into my skull from an early age). No safe, no lock. For her purpose -self defense- that was the best place to put it. We were not rich, so our homes were not big. An intruder would need maybe 30 seconds to do a check to see if anyone was home, so mom would have had 30 seconds to get the gun.

That is the argument against locking the defense weapon, and it's valid. If you have to lock the weapon (which you should do with kids around), it severely limits its effectiveness for home defense. You may as well not have it.

Of course, this ignores that most burglars are not armed (they don't want a confrontation), and target empty homes (e.g. people at work). Even adding a chihuahua to the equation will dissuade most because they don't want a confrontation, and they do want to get in and out quietly. So a firearm is more likely to be stolen when no one is there, rather than used on an intruder.**

I conclude that rather than have a gun safe or lock, just don't have the gun at all. If you're safe and responsible, the gun is almost useless. If you're not, you're just asking for trouble.

Hunting weapons are different, and should be kept unloaded in a locked gun safe. There is no excuse not to. But then hunting weapons don't need large magazines nor high cyclic rates.

**Last time I visited the data, it was 22x more likely to be used against a member of the household than an intruder, including suicides.