It's a MAGAZINE not a Clip

Well, I guess we’ll all just call them bison from now on.
Happy?

I think I understand the distinction now. One of them is a thingamajig and the other is a whadayacallit.

If you’re going to argue that alcohol above a certain proof should be banned, you should probably know the difference between methyl and ethyl. I’m in favor of safer cars too but I’m not qualified to tell auto-makers how to do it.

What, they’ve never heard the term dozen gauge?

Ethyl was Lucy’s friend. Not sure who Methyl is. Was she on Green Acres?

Methyl was Ethyl’s evil meth addict twin. She was married to Ferd and lived in the basement.

As far as I’m concerned, a magazine is the place where artillery shells are stored. On a repeating rifle, it’s the place where the rounds are kept prior to being chambered. Some repeating rifles have removable magazines, others don’t. Ones that don’t are either loaded one round at a time, or with a bunch of rounds clipped together. I learned this from some pedant in my first gun debate a couple decades ago. It wasn’t that hard to learn, and so I somewhat agree with the OP; if knowing the distinction can avoid this derailment in future arguments, it’s worth the 2 seconds to learn it.

That said, everyone who grew up watching WWII movies knows that when you need to shove more bullets into your Nazi-killing device, you scream that you need a clip. Therefore, I don’t begrudge anyone for just referring to anything that they need to shove into a gun to make more noise a “clip.” And Merriam-Webster’s definition reflects that popular usage.

So, the way I see it, everyone who doesn’t understand the terminology should take the 2 seconds to learn it, and everyone who gives a shit about the difference should stop harassing common folk who just like to watch movies. Then we can all get on with the previously scheduled showdown.

To the OP, or other nit-pickers who may want to chime in, how would you feel about a reporter calling the venerable M1911 an automatic pistol?

^^^Too funny! :smiley:

I can get behind the morons in journalism pitting. I cringe every time a reporter says the pilot stalled his engine and crashed his plane. That’s like admitting they haven’t the slightest clue about what they are reporting.

This thread is more akin to a motorhead getting upset about Fox 5 local news covering the car show, as opposed to the auto show.

Whether you call it a clip or call it a magazine, you still have a small penis.

OK, since we’re getting serious, I want to strangle, with my bare hands, any reporter who calls a fossil a “missing link”.

I would say someone looked it up on Wiki and didn’t know much about firearms. :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, I know it’s properly a semi-automatic, but I don’t have a problem categorizing common pistols* as either automatics or revolvers depending on the chambering system.
The repeated use of “assault weapon” is getting on my nerves, though.

  • i.e. not including exotic or antique pistols that don’t fit either category

Gun grabbers don’t want or need to know anything about what they seek to ban. Knowing that they hate them and those who own them is enough.

Again, I learned the difference from some pedant, but a an 18-wheeler isn’t a tractor/trailer, it’s a tractor/semi-trailer, because the trailer doesn’t support all of its own weight. And I don’t get annoyed when people refer to them as a “truck and trailer” instead of a “truck and semi-trailer” because I think the former is acceptable under the rules of English. That’s because a semi-trailer is a kind of trailer, just like a semi-automatic weapon is a kind of automatic weapon, in the sense that the weapon does something for you automatically.

When talking specifics, I always prefer to specify fully-automatic or semi-automatic, but if someone says, “True or false, an M1911 is an automatic weapon,” I would say true, even though I know that lots of pedants would disagree.

No, Wiki calls it a semi-auto in the first sentence. But a lot of the official terminology around that gun skips the semi part, including the name of the ammunition it fires.

If you were telling a fellow gun enthusiast what pistols you own, wouldn’t you just call it a 45 auto?

Or a recreational drug aficionado getting steamed when things like cocaine and ecstasy are referred to as “narcotics.”

Golly, does that make me mad.

Hey, I’m pissed that people use ‘uncountable’ to mean ‘too many to count’ rather than its mathematical definition of ‘an infinite number, of cardinality too great to be put into one-to-one correspondence with the integers.’

Actually, I’m not the least bit pissed about that. I don’t insist that everyone use words exactly the way someone knowledgeable in my field would; I think such an expectation would be unreasonable.

I think the OP should have the same attitude.