Seen at SayUncle. It gave me a good laugh!
(Photo of PlasmaFox’s AR-15)
Repeat after me “clips are used to hold cartridges together for quick loading, magazines are used to hold cartridges for feeding into the guns’ chamber” 
The best explanation of the differences that I could find is at The Gun Zone.
The terms are NOT interchangeable!
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I love those ‘motivational’ posters…
What would it do to the AR-15?
What about a clip fed Garand which feeds rounds from a clip into the chamber?
Dumb story.
The generic term “clip” is understood by most humans depending on the context.
When I put a clip in my ar I am aware it is not a stripper clip, an en-bloc clip or a moon clip. It is a magazine. I understand that because the weapon does not take any of those “clips”.
Tod it is an en-bloc clip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clip_(ammunition)
it is like calling a tire, a wheel. Sure in the context I know what you are mean, but that does not make it correct.
root man, I know that. It does not appear that Steve does, since he said “clips are used to hold cartridges together for quick loading, magazines are used to feed cartridges into the guns’ chamber” which is not a correct definition.
I have updated it slightly. People commonly say the difference is that magazines have springs while clips do not. That is also not correct. In the past magazine have been made that are gravity fed and contain no spring.
A good friend and ‘high speed’ Boston area law enforcement friend and I had this very conversation when I was qualifying on the M-4.
I, unlike many, never interchanged the two ‘clip’ or ‘magazine’ in my work as a journalist. I knew Garands worked on ‘clips,’ I knew that ’stripper clips’ were not the same and I knew that magazines were entirely different.
He appreciated that a writer knew the lingo and differences. But in his profession it was vitally important.
‘Sarge’ told me of court cases lost because of his fellow officers couldn’t properly explain the components of their service weapon. As he simply put it, when a cop is asked by an attorney about his weapon and replies ‘clip’ instead of magazine, that gives a savvy attorney room to pounce. If you cannot properly ID your weapon, then how sure can we be that you know how to properly maintain or employ it in the line of duty?
Clip and magazine, big differences to smart cops.
How do revolver moon clips fit into the picture?
22lr, moon clips are probably analogous to en bloc clips.
“People commonly say the difference is that magazines have springs while clips do not. That is also not correct. In the past magazine have been made that are gravity fed and contain no spring.”
Another way in which that is not technically correct is that some stripper clips do have a spring. It’s a leaf spring that applies pressure on the base of the cartridge in order to prevent them from just sliding out on their own.
Probably the most likely one people reading this have seen is if they’ve loaded an M16 magazine using a military stripper clip.
So, am I wrong to only see the humor in the picture?
then why does Savage and Remington as late as just a couple of years ago refer to their .22 rifles that use a box appendage to hold ready ammunition as Clip Fed.
Its semantics. Plain and simple.
I have US government packaging for 1911 magazines, which refers to Clips, ammunition, type 1911a1. caliber .45
It was never an issue until the internet and typewriter experts started to have a coniption.
re springs, I have springfield stripper clips that have leaf springs for holding the ammunition in place. The Bofors magazine rack was purely gravity fed.
When I’m teaching classes, I always describe it this way:
“Clips load magazines, Magazines load guns.”
I was thinking about this the other day, and I suspect that the distinction is that a magazine, once loaded, contains all the necessary parts to feed ammunition to the gun to which the magazine belongs. That may or may not include things like a follower, spring or feed lips, depending, I guess, on the design of the rifle.
E.g. the en-bloc clips used by the M-1 Garand have feed lips, but no way to present additional rounds to the bolt without the follower found in the rifle’s magazine. Once the clip is loaded into the rifle’s magazine, however, the feed lips keep the excess rounds from being shoved out by the follower, and the follower ensures that the next round will be presented to the bolt and extractor once the current round is ejected.
Oh, hey, that’s my AR-15 that I posted to the AR-15 forums. I feel jealous now that my gun is more famous than I am.