Clips and Magazines

What’s a ‘Clip’ and What’s a Magazine?

 

You hear this all the time in movies… a shooter is out of ammunition, and he yells to his friend “throw me a clip”!  The terms ‘clip’ and ‘magazine’ are such a part of casual shooting lexicon that many people think they are interchangeable terms that mean the same thing. The truth, though, is that they are not… and it’s a dead giveaway to knowledgeable gun people that someone is a novice when they mix them up.

 

So what is the difference? A magazine is a chamber for holding cartridges in a gun. Magazines can be either built into the gun (called internal magazines) or they can be externally removable. It is these removable magazines that people sometimes incorrectly call a ‘clip’. The picture at right is an image of a common AR15 magazine. Removable magazines are commonly found on both rifles and handguns, but many older weapons (such as the iconic Springfield 1903 rifle) contained internal magazines. Often, such as with the Springfield, these were “box” magazines, where cartridges were stacked vertically, though some weapons such as shotguns and lever action rifles used tubular magazines, wherein the rounds must be loaded into the tubes, one at a time. The use of tubular magazines continues with those type weapons; to this day.

 

Where, then, did the term ‘clip’ come in? Originally, ‘stripper clips’ were used to hold a predetermined set of cartridges for a weapon; the clip was then inserted into a receptacle that was visible with the bolt opened up, then rounds were ‘stripped’ off the clip by pushing them down into the internal magazine (shown at right). Soldiers could easily carry spare clips in their pocket or ammo pouch, and quickly load a set into their weapon.

 

A variation of this was found in the design of the famous M1 Garand rifle (shown at left), which also uses a clip. However, the rounds are not ‘stripped’ out of this clip. Rather, the entire clip assembly was loaded into the internal magazine, as a block. This style clip is referred to as an ‘en bloc’ clip. In the case of both the stripper clip or the en bloc clip, the clip is used to load an internal magazine on the weapon.

 

So, very “casually” speaking, both a clip and a magazine (as the terms are commonly used) are used to carry a set of cartridges, to quickly load a weapon. Clips are sometimes used to load internal magazines, while external magazines are just called a magazine. The terms”clip’ and ‘magazine’ are not interchangeable… despite how Hollywood may use them. Knowledgeable shooters know the difference!