Most of us gun owners in Illinois are already familiar with the ongoing debate of fanny-packs being a legal definition as an "enclosed case" for transportation. Illinois state law requires that while transporting a firearm in a vehicle that the gun be enclosed in a case or box and unloaded.
But there is another word that could be easily debated. That word is "unloaded".
After reviewing the state laws, it doesn't give any definition of what "unloaded" is.
If you take a semi-auto handgun, at what point is it "loaded". Some people may say that the gun is loaded when there is a magazine holding one or more rounds and the magazine is inserted into the gun.
I don't define my handgun actually loaded until there is a round in the chamber. To MY personal definition, "loaded" means when the round is immediately positioned to be fired after pulling the trigger. So when one inserts a magazine holding ammunition into a semi-auto handgun, the gun isn't loaded to be immediately fired until the user pulls back the slide to "load" the round into the chamber.

So as there isn't a clear, written definition of "unloaded" or "loaded" in the law books, there is a possibility that if you are caught and arrested transporting a cased gun with a loaded magazine inserted in the gun, but no round in chamber, bring it to court and ask the judge and anyone else in the courtroom where in the state law books is "unloaded" or "loaded" defined in relevance to where the the round must be inside the particular firearm you are carrying to be considered "loaded" or "unloaded". When they tell you they can't, tell them to have a nice day.

[b]ArmaLiter[/b]