Quote:
Notwithstanding any other provision of any law or any rule or
regulation of a State or any political subdivision thereof, any person
who is not otherwise prohibited by this chapter from transporting,
shipping, or receiving a firearm shall be entitled to transport a
firearm for any lawful purpose from any place where he may lawfully
possess and carry such firearm to any other place where he may
lawfully possess and carry such firearm if, during such transportation
the firearm is unloaded, and neither the firearm nor any ammunition
being transported is readily accessible or is directly accessible from
the passenger compartment of such transporting vehicle: Provided, That
in the case of a vehicle without a compartment separate from the
driver’s compartment the firearm or ammunition shall be contained in a
locked container other than the glove compartment or console.
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So, what you're saying is that because there were cartridges in the same locked box as the gun, the gun was deemed to be "loaded".
I think that would be a precedent setting case. It seems to me that the law only requires that the gun be "unloaded", which it was. In Canada and the US, we're supposed to follow "the black letter of the law", which means that the law is exactly what's written, and "interpretation" of what's written shouldn't add anything to it or remove anything from it. In this case, if some NY judge has interpreted the word "loaded" to mean "in close proximity to ammunition", then that's something that needs to be reviewed. When you consider that any reasonable person reading the paragraph above would NOT have seen any need to keep the ammunition in a separate locked box from the gun, then I can't see how the charges would have stuck. Are we now supposed to read into the law everything the authorities want to be written into it, but which isn't?
I'd have let them take me to court on this one, and I would have asked the judge to tell them to give me my gun back too.