Mainah said:
Just how much ammo are we talking about??
Several hundred rounds. A mix of shotgun shells, .30-30, .38, and .22.
That's not a lot, in the overall scheme of things. It's legal to ship ammunition by FedEx or UPS, but it's expensive, it must be declared, and it's a hassle. You can't ship ammo from the neighborhood UPS store -- it has to be taken to an actual UPS depot. For me, that's the difference of 2.5 miles to the UPS store compared to 25 miles to the nearest company shipping hub. If you were talking about thousands of rounds, then it might make sense to look at shipping. For a few hundred rounds -- including .22 rimfire -- IMHO it's not worth the bother and expense of trying to ship it. Either pack it up in an old toolbox with a padlock on it, or give/sell it to a friend in Maine and buy new when you get to North Carolina.
If you transport it, even though I don't think any law requires it if you don't have firearms in the car, I would be certain that all magazines are unloaded.
If you are going to have even one firearm with you in the car, the FOPA requires that the gun(s) "or" ammo be in a compartment that cannot be accessed from the passenger compartment (i.e. the trunk) or, if the vehicle has no trunk (a van or SUV), in a locked container. I put "or" in quotation marks because that's what the federal FOPA says. Several of the northeast states reproduce the FOPA is their statutes, with a potential gotcha: New Jersey and at least one other (don't remember which at the moment) changed "or" to "and" -- meaning that the gun(s) have to be in a locked container, and the ammunition must also be in a locked container.
They don't specify that the gun(s) and ammo have to be in
separate locked containers but, when I've traveled through those states, I have approached it that way. I drive an SUV. The guns were in hard plastic gun cases, with small travel padlocks on each case. The ammo was in an old, metal, mechanic's toolbox with a padlock on it. Then everything was covered over with a mover's blanket, and my luggage and a couple of loose jackets were thrown on top.