Why people call Mags clips?

[AdAstra2009]

Originally Posted by Evil Tim

Well, it's more that someone who uses a weapon for a living doesn't really have to care too much about what the correct terms are for the various bits of it. For, say, the guy at the depot trying to work out if the guys on the front want thirty cases of preloaded mags or thirty cases of stripper clips, then it's a bit more of an issue. (Let's not even get into things like what ground crews think of pilots' knowledge of their aircraft).

Never heard of preloaded mags coming straight from the depot.

I'm playing devil's advocate and yeah it's incorrect practice to call a mag a clip.
I just think it's obnoxious to snap on someone for something small like that.

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008

Remember when the ATF tried to declare a 'shoelace' when tied to the trigger of a weapon whose vibration would initiate another firing pin actuation, to be a machine gun. Yes, a SHOELACE would be a machine gun if attached to a semiauto rifle.

As I recall, wasn't the reason that failed because a shoelace would be a machine gun even if it wasn't attached to the rifle? I guess they were hoping that by now America would be free of everything but grandfathered shoelaces and they could get on to tackling the threat of velcro.

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

Never heard of preloaded mags coming straight from the depot.

I thought I'd heard of it being done, though I can see why you wouldn't, it's just asking for springs to fail on you. Still, just empty mags would be the same problem if you wind up with 30 cans of them when you wanted 30 cans of bullets.

Originally Posted by AdAstra2009

I'm playing devil's advocate and yeah it's incorrect practice to call a mag a clip.
I just think it's obnoxious to snap on someone for something small like that.

Well, depends on usage, really. If you discuss things at a technical level a lot you need the terms to mean different things since otherwise it's rather hard to explain, say, what the difference is between a Mauser C96 and an M712 (one uses a 10-round clip and the other uses...a 10-round clip? A 10-round detachable clip? But, um, isn't the first one's clip...argh). Obviously the "perception" argument doesn't apply to the things themselves; if you put a C96 clip and a Schnellfeuer box magazine on the table side by side, no matter who looks at them it will be clear they are two different things. The trouble is the common usage leaves no word to describe one but not the other.

To give the example I should have given to begin with, "chaingun" is a good example of a term almonst universally used incorrectly. You ask your average man on the street what a chaingun is and you'll almost certainly have a gatling gun described to you. Which is fine until you're trying to explain what kind of gun a Bradley has and realise the actual term for it doesn't mean what it's supposed to anymore.

[commando552]

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.