Nanuk 950 15-Up Pistol Case Review

We travel a lot with our guns (to the ranch and back home, out to training seminars, to see family), so we've been through a lot of cases and bags. Today's review is my new favorite: the Nanuk 950, their 15-up pistol case. If you don't know the brand, Nanuk made their name in photography and film equipment cases, and about six or seven years ago they launched a firearms line. This 950 is one of the newest iterations, and as you can see, it fits a shitload of guns.

The case itself is injection-molded from what I believe is called NK-7 resin, and it's basically indestructible: think your standard Pelican case on steroids. It has steel-housed eyelets so you can lock it down for flying or public transportation, an inset rubber gasket up top that marries into a raised molded lip for a real seal (not just seal-on-seal like some cases) and it's dust proof and waterproof. Nothing is getting into this darn thing.

My favorite feature is what Nanuk calls the PowerClaw latch. Normal plastic-case latches make you clamp down hard, and when you've got taller guns pressing up on the lid it can be a real fight. The PowerClaw is a two-step push-down-and-pull design that closes so smooth I can literally do it with one little finger. It's a genuinely new way to think about closing these cases.

Capacity-wise it holds 15 pistols, everything from a little Canik Mete MC9 up to an X5 Legion, though heads up, if you run a large optic like the one on my X5, you may need to cut an indent into the closed-cell foam because it won't seat down very far. I only carry 13 in mine, and that's on purpose. There's a slot beside each pistol for at least two mags per gun, and I use the spare gun compartments for extras: a Glock stick from Amend2 slid into a slide-and-barrel slot, and three extra P320 mags for all the Sigs I keep in here.

The one real downside: if your guns wear weapon lights, they have to come off to fit the slots. My workaround is keeping my TLR-1 HLs in the side compartment: pull a gun, slap a light on, good to go. It's also wheeled with a two-step telescoping roller handle plus side handles, and when I left Miami I rolled this thing all around the airport along with another of their cases. They make an aftermarket TSA lock kit too, though I'm not a big fan of TSA locks: I just don't trust the system, and I'm not giving somebody easy access to my firearms.

Final thoughts: this is not the inexpensive case for hauling one gun to the range and back. At around $350-360 it's a high-quality product made to be rugged and take a beating, but when you add up the soft cases, hard cases, and range-bag chaos it replaces, there's a lot of value in putting them all in one place. Nanuk makes everything from single-pistol cases up to a 20-pistol monster, plus shotgun, rifle, and combo battle cases, and we've got the four-up rifle case review coming.