Maybe it is a regional thing (I'm from England) but I have never heard someone refer to a rifle magazine as a clip, only pistol magazines. Also soldiers today definitely know the difference between a magazine and a clip, otherwise you would get situations like you carry 8 clips in your webbing and 15 clips in a bandolier and to fill up a clip you empty 3 clips into it. This is just my personal opinion, but I've always thought that the reason clip is used rather than magazine is because it is a "cooler" sounding word, so gets overused (relative to the correct term magazine) in films, television and music, leading to people thinking it is the correct term. Personally I won't correct someone if they use the term incorrectly in conversation, I will just take that as a cue that I probably know more about the subject than them.
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