I never knew….

[Heinz]

One of my high school teachers, "Mr. Mac", was a WWII Marine. He too called them "clips." Didn't matter what kind of gun it was.

You could tell Mr. Mac he was wrong, but I sure wasn't going to.

Mr Mac was right.
It was a clip. The clip of bullets is used to charge the magazine in the firearm. Some are "stripper clips, where the cartridges are pushed from the clip into the magazine, some clips are inserted into the magazine and ejected later, like the M1 or half-moon clips in the 1917 revolver. Clips hold cartridges as an aid in loading magazines.
Many words in the English language have multiple meanings. It is a viking influenced language, they stole any words they liked, and used them how they pleased.

 

[mikerjf]

Our local Guard armory had so many old magazines in their magazine that they had to page thru magazines that pictured the magazine's magazines to keep them all organized. In the magazine, I mean.

(If they took the last loaded magazine out of the magazine, is the magazine now empty? LOL...)

 

[MsRuth]

....(If they took the last loaded magazine out of the magazine, is the magazine now empty? LOL...)

It would have to be the last magazine from a magzinze filled with magazines to be an empty magazine magazine, if they merely removed the last loaded magazine from the magazine magazine while leaving behind the empty magazines-- or even replacing the loaded magazines with used magazines-- then it would still be a loaded magazine of unloaded magazines.

I can explain blue lines and red lines next...

 

[tops]

It would have to be the last magazine from a magzinze filled with magazines to be an empty magazine magazine, if they merely removed the last loaded magazine from the magazine magazine while leaving behind the empty magazines-- or even replacing the loaded magazines with used magazines-- then it would still be a loaded magazine of unloaded magazines.

Reading that made my eyes cross and my head hurt and spin. Larry

 

[Mule Packer]

I give up. In my younger years (we're talking a good 60 years ago), the little metal container that held five .22LR bullets that slipped into the bottom of the old Remington bolt action that many folks kept by the kitchen door was called a clip. Everyone called it that. Whether you were a punk kid or an old World War I or World War II veteran, it was a clip. Period.

Also, any type of handgun was a pistol. Didn't matter if it was a revolver or a semi-automatic, it was a pistol.

Nowadays, if you call a revolver a pistol, some graduate in the field of pomposity will first give you a look reserved for a child molester, and then, with an authoritative smile of Christian charity, will correct you and tell you that it's a revolver.

Like I said...I give up.

Oh...as a side note...I just finished reading an old Skeeter Skelton article where he calls the model 1911 that Dobe Grant carries "a .45 automatic." Can you imagine the uproar if he had written that today instead of fifty years ago? "It's a semi-automatic, Skeeter! A semi-automatic!!"

When I hear someone call a magazine a clip, a revolver a pistol, and a model 1911 an automatic, I think, "So What? I know what he means." Geeesh! Give the poor guy a break! Heck! If that's the worst of his mistakes, I figure he's doing a heckuva lot better than I am.

 

[MsRuth]

....Nowadays, if you call a revolver a pistol, some graduate in the field of pomposity... will correct you and tell you that it's a revolver...

Okay...so what's this:

 

[arjay]

Okay...so what's this:

That there's a rifle with a rotating magazine,but since it's removable it's also a clip ;-)

 

[jem102]

The M1 folks call it a clip as that is the correct designation for the 8 round device, an "en block clip".

 

[Absalom]

On a "we treat former enemies better than our allies" note, the weapons we supplied to Great Britain through lend-lease had to be returned or destroyed after the war. So-- a sad sound*-- literal tons of classic firearms including S&W revolvers were dumped into the ocean...

This is not correct.

Small arms were considered write-offs, and their value (neglegible anyways compared to the big stuff) was calculated into the post-war repayment scheme. Uncle Sam specifically did not want them back; they became the property of the British government and were sold to international surplus dealers starting in the 1950s, many of whom reimported them to the US. Many of us own a few

Ocean dumping of Lend-Lease trucks, tanks, and airplanes is documented in case of Australia, which at war's end was saddled with stockpiles they didn't need, couldn't sell under L-L rules, and didn't have the money or interest to maintain, but which the US refused to take back. I've not encountered information on whether anything was disposed of like that in Britain.

 

[Spajohn]

I sleep more comfortably on a stack of old magazines because I have lots of back issues.

 

[Rustyt1953]

I sleep more comfortably on a stack of old magazines because I have lots of back issues.

Well played.

 

[MsRuth]

This is not correct.

I cannot quote the source but I have read that "all" (and I'm always wary of universal claims) of the .38 S&W (not .38 S&W Spl) revolvers sent to England and supplied to the Home Guard Units in 1940 were collected in 1945 and dumped in the Irish Sea accounting for their scarcity.

Small arms were considered write-offs, and their value (neglegible anyways compared to the big stuff) was calculated into the post-war repayment scheme. Uncle Sam specifically did not want them back;

Uncle Sam didn't want anything back. He had tons of stuff that he either destroyed in place in Germany or shipped back from CONUS bases to the Arizona desert to sell as surplus. To add to his displeasure sometimes his contractors brought suit against him for not enforcing L-L provisions.

Two lawsuits filled in the late 40s by Curtis-Wright and Douglas have successfully prevented the importation of the Lisunov Li-2 (a licence built DC-3, which can be legally flown in the US under Cuban registration-- no, laws make no sense at all), and Shvetsov engines (licence built Wright Cyclones) built in Russia, but not Shvetsov's built in Poland, or Chinese built ASh (Shvetsov licensed) engines.

Both of those suits were filed because the Soviets continued to use L-L supplied DC-3s and Cyclones after the war rather than destroy them. Which would of course have increased royalties under the two licensing agreements.

they became the property of the British government and were sold to international surplus dealers starting in the 1950s, many of whom reimported them to the US. Many of us own a few

Ocean dumping of Lend-Lease trucks, tanks, and airplanes is documented in case of Australia, which at war's end was saddled with stockpiles they didn't need, couldn't sell under L-L rules, and didn't have the money or interest to maintain, but which the US refused to take back...

To me the saddest example was the scuttling of the five Consolidated Catalinas supplied to Quantas for the Double Sunrise flights (The Double Sunrise - Wikipedia) a 4,030 mile 27 to 33 hour journey from Perth to Africa avoiding the Japanese occupied Malaysian peninsula and Indonesia.

 

[Rustyt1953]

To review;

The clip:




The magazine:




The Larch:

 

[MsRuth]

....The Larch:

How not to be seen.

 

[max]

He was correct. The Garands are loaded with clips.

My dad carried a Garand in the ETO. To his dying day he called all magazines "clips".

I knew what he meant.

 

[Llance]

The action of the Clip from an M1 while making a "ping" sound thus alerting the Germans or other enemy combatants that your rifle was empty is pure hogwash. If the enemy was close enough to hear that "ping" he/she was close enough to have his/her hearing destroyed by the sound of the bullet being fired. If she or he were far enough away to hear it, he or she was far enough away to be no danger to the person firing the M1.

In the heat of battle with all the other sounds of rifles being fired, mortars, artillery, and other explosions no one is going to hear that "ping".

 

[CH4]

Through the extensive misuse of "clip," it has become colloquial for magazine. It's just one of many words that have met this fate. Folks need to move on, irregardless if they think it's proper or not.

 

[Bumpus13]

Okay...so what's this:

A carbine.

Now, let's fight over that pronunciation. LOL

 

[Marylander]

Well, my earliest definition of that "thing" that holds a cartridge was back in 1958. That definition went something like, "if you can see all the cartridges clearly, that "holder is a CLIP, as in M1 en bloc". OTOH, if you cannot see all the cartridges clearly, "that holder is a MAGAZINE". Of course your YMMV. So it goes.

 

[Absalom]

Well, my earliest definition of that "thing" that holds a cartridge was back in 1958. That definition went something like, "if you can see all the cartridges clearly, that "holder is a CLIP, as in M1 en bloc". OTOH, if you cannot see all the cartridges clearly, "that holder is a MAGAZINE". .

That definition seems time-sensitive.

And expired with the arrival of clear polymers.

Clip?