Also what does caliber mean in regards to bullets?
In: Technology
Caliber is the size of the bullet. High-caliber rounds are big.
A round of ammo is what most people think of as a “bullet”. It’s the bullet and the casing (and the propellant and primer), the whole package.
A mag/clip are the same thing (unless you’re a gun nerd, then the difference is the most important thing in the world apparently): the thing where rounds are loaded.
A drum is a big round magazine.
Caliber- dimensions of a bullet.
Round/Cartridge- the bullet, casing, primer, gunpowder, etc (what you load into a firearm).
Clip- usually a metal strip that binds a bunch of cartridges together. These get fed directly into a magazine (internal or external).
Magazine- a container that holds cartridges can be internal or external. When *most* people say “clip” they are referring to a magazine.
Drum- a very big magazine that looks kinda like a drum.
A round is another word for [cartridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartridge_(firearms)) (i.e. a bullet with its propellant).
A [magazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magazine_(firearms)#Drum) is a box that holds cartridges and feeds them into the firearm. In modern weapons the magazine is typically removable but in older guns it might be fixed.
A drum is a round magazine that packs its cartridges into a spiral shape.
A [clip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clip_(firearms)) is a piece of metal that holds several cartridges together, primarily for the purpose of quickly reloading a magazine (especially if the magazine itself is not removable from the gun). This is the term that is misused the most; a lot of people say “clip” when they mean “magazine,” unless they’re referring to very particular firearms that are/were reloaded with clips, such as the M1 Garand.
Edit: I forgot caliber; that’s just a measure of the size of a bullet. Usually it’s the internal diameter of the barrel (though that can be measured in multiple ways). E.g. “.45 caliber” means a 0.45-inch (~11.43mm) diameter bore.
Mag – short for magazine, which is just a metal container used to house the bullets before they get fed into the guns receiver to be fired.
Drum – a magazine designed for high capacity, that is typically circular, hence why it’s sometimes called a “drum” mag
Clip – a strip of metal that rounds can be stacked together on, and then loaded into a magazine, either internal or external.
An internal magazine is built into the gun and cannot be removed, meaning it must constantly be reloaded with clips holding the bullets.
External magazines can be removed from the gun entirely and reloaded bullet by bullet
Round – a round is a bullet, including the casing, powder, primer, everything. If you can imagine someone loading rounds into a magazine, that whole long gold-shiny thing is a round.
The word bullet is used interchangeably for both the piece of metal that gets ejected out of the barrel and separated from the casing (the metal piece housing the bullet before it’s fired), as well as the whole round.
Caliber – the dimensions of a round/bullet (9mm, .50 caliber, etc)
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