Media definition of a clip

For many years I’ve been fighting a losing battle (daughter Jaime claims I lost the battle years ago) about people calling a “magazine” a “clip”. I’m not fighting the battle alone though. Guy Sagi posted Top Media-Abused Gun Terms and points out the problem is larger than I usually view it:

Clip—Any ammunition-retention system, including magazines, speed loaders, belts, bandoleers and TSA screeners.

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5 thoughts on “Media definition of a clip

  1. If you refer to an M1 Rifle, correct. In other cases, not so much.

    How do you combat ignorance?

    • You allow it to become sufficiently painful, rather than protecting them from the natural consequences of their actions / choices.

  2. Or you can poke fun at it, as Arne Boberg did when he named a detail in the XR45 magazine “magazine clip”. It’s a protrusion in the sheet metal of the magazine shell that engages the cartridge rims, to hold the cartridge in the correct position for the feed tongs to pick it up.

  3. If it’s willful and deliberate, it isn’t ignorance.
    As Heinlein put it: “The difference between ignorance and stupidity is that ignorance is curable”.

  4. I’m not sure “ammunition” is common enough among the ignorancia. Maybe it should be “bullets”; “any bullet retention device…”. The problem there is that “retention device” is pretty high-worded for the typical media report aimed at the L.I.V. So maybe;
    “Clip; any bullet holder thingy.”

    That could be understood by just about any public school administrator, union official, Democrat voter, college graduate or Senator.

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