Anti-gun groups, politicians and biased members of the media often use such terms incorrectly, sometimes due to lack of knowledge but often with malicious intent. So, if we as gun owners don't accurately apply firearms terminology, who will? How can aspiring shooters, genuine journalists or the public at-large hope to receive reliable information? Here are some of the most commonly misused and confused gun terms. You know that boxy rectangular thing that holds cartridges and slides into the bottom of your semi-auto pistol?
It's not a clip, no matter how often the term is misused. It's a magazine. A magazine holds shells under spring pressure in preparation for feeding into the firearm's chamber. Examples include box, tubular, drum and rotary magazines. Some are fixed to the firearm while others are removable. A cartridge "clip" has no spring and does not feed shells directly into the chamber.
Rather, clips hold cartridges in the correct sequence for "charging" a specific firearm's magazine. Stripper clips allow rounds to be "stripped" into the magazine. Other types are fed along with the shells into the magazine, the M1 Garand famously operates in this fashion.
Once all rounds have been fired, the clip is ejected or otherwise released from the firearm. The term "assault rifle" is perhaps the most commonly misused gun term, and certainly it's one of the most damaging to the public's perception of firearms.
Most often, the media, anti-gun groups and all-too-many gun owners incorrectly use it to describe an AR rifle. Department of Defense defines assault rifles as "selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between sub-machine gun and rifle cartridges. They are semi-automatic, non-battlefield firearms. To add further clarity, "AR" also does not stand for "assault rifle" or "automatic rifle" as is occasionally implied, but rather ArmaLite rifle, after the company that developed it in the s.
However, anti-gun groups have been hugely successful applying the false label to convince Americans that AR's and other semi-auto rifle platforms are a fully automatic, public threat. Much of the mainstream media now uses the "assault rifle" label broadly and without question. To further capitalize, anti-gun groups completely invented the term "assault weapons" to broadly cover everything from home-defense shotguns to standard-capacity handguns, anything they wish to ban.
In fact, according to Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joseph E. Olson, writing in the Stanford Law and Policy Review , "Prior to , the term 'assault weapon' did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of 'assault rifles' so as to allow an attack on as many additional firearms as possible on the basis of undefined 'evil' appearance.
So, while the term "assault rifle" is frequently misused, the term "assault weapon" doesn't even really exist. These seemingly synonymous terms are often used interchangeably, but they describe two distinct aspects of shots on target.
Accuracy is a measurement of the shooter's ability to consistently hit a given target; precision is essentially the tightness of his groups. That's the same thing, you say? Perhaps further examples are in order. The best illustration of the differences I've come across is courtesy of an unlikely source: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Precision" was written with surveyors in mind, but its examples include four, four-shot groups by a rifleman who we shall assume has a perfectly zeroed firearm and is aiming for the center of the target.
In example No. This is neither precise nor accurate. This is precise the shots are close together but not accurate the shots are far off-center. He is accurate his shots are near the intended target but not precise it's a wide group. This is both accurate he hit the center of the target and precise all four shots were close together.
So, while a rifle that consistently produces tight groups is often described as "accurate," it's more properly an indication of good precision.
There is some gray area with this one. The M1 Garand uses clips to load rounds into an internal magazine. Now that you know the difference in magazine vs. Let your fellow shooters know — share this article using the Facebook, Twitter and other social media icons below. The more we all know, the better organized and stronger the shooting and hunting community will be.
The Lodge AmmoToGo. Look for tips for the range here. About Us Contact Us. Shop at AmmunitionToGo. Magazine vs. Clips - It's a pet peeve of gun owners and two terms consistently mistakenly as the same thing. Let's dissect the difference between clips and magazines and look at a potential root cause of the confusion.
There are a lot of terms when it comes to firearms and ammunition. Clip Confusion The two tools are distinct and separate components of firearms. The magazine holds the cartridges, stores them, and feeds them into the chamber of the firearm. Detachable Magazines This is where most of the confusion comes from. Internal Magazine An internal magazine is simply a magazine held inside the firearm. What is a Clip? En Bloc Clips With this design, both the entire package of clip and cartridge is loaded into the firearm.
Stripper Clips A stripper clip is essentially a tool that holds a row of cartridges. Again, these devices are used for loading ammunition into the magazine, which then feeds the individual rounds into the firing chamber.
For rifles with an internal magazine, the clip loads the bullets into the firearm itself see image below. For all of the confusion surrounding clips vs. What does magazine mean? A magazine is a device or chamber for holding a supply of cartridges to be fed automatically to breech of a gun. It is the area from where ammunition is pulled and put into the firing chamber. As I mentioned under the clip section, a magazine can be integral to the firearm an internal magazine or it can be removable a detachable magazine.
In either case, the magazine is the area of the gun that feeds ammunition into the chamber. Most modern day pistols and many rifles use detachable magazines. The magazine is filled with ammunition by hand, sometimes with a clip, and it is then loaded into the gun. The magazine then feeds individual rounds of ammunition into the chamber through a spring-loaded follower.
While not all guns use clips, all guns, with the exception of revolvers or single-shot firearms, have magazines.
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