My impression is that I've never seen a CLIP that wasn't a simple metal OBJECT made of a sheet of springy steel. It holds ammo so that a spring inside the gun can feed it.
A MAGAZINE, on the other hand, is a DEVICE consisting of at least three separate parts (body, spring, follower, most often a separate baseplate as well) that both holds and feeds ammo.
The general public says clip interchangeably, but the general public thinks you can buy 'cop killer bullets' at the local gun store, an AR15 is an 'assault rifle' and that handgun bullets can blow a grown man backwards through the air. One would think a subscriber to a firearms forum would want to be more knowledgeable than the general public.
