20040913

Time for some nomenclature, OK class?

Alphecca rates the Manchester Union-Leader highly in its politically balanced approach to reporting on firearms issues. However, their editor needs some schooling:

About the only material difference New Hampshire gun enthusiasts are likely to see after the federal assault weapons ban expires tomorrow are lower prices for high-capacity gun cartridges that hold more than 10 bullets, gun owners and dealers said.


The thingy that that is projected from the gun, travels to the target and hits it is a bullet. In shotguns, specially built to throw multiple projectiles in a single discharge, the many projectiles are called pellets of shot.

The device that contains the projectile along with a measured quantity of propellant is the cartridge. A shotgun cartridge is called a shotshell.

In a self-loading firearm, such as that class of self-loaders that is now legal to manufacture and market with military cosmetic features, the device that holds and feeds cartridges into the firearm is a magazine. A common misnomer for magazine is clip, which actually refers to a device used to stack cartridges together for insertion into the magazine.

So what the sentence should have said is:
About the only material difference New Hampshire gun enthusiasts are likely to see after the federal assault weapons ban expires tomorrow are lower prices for high-capacity gun magazinesthat hold more than 10 cartridges , gun owners and dealers said.


The editor surely did not mean to refer to the Salvo project, which sought to fit multiple bullets in a single cartridge. This was not a shotgun, in that the cartridge contained a number of simple spherical pellets of lead that are thrown from a smooth barrel in a spreading pattern, but an axial stack of bullets, each fitting the bore of a rifled barrel and taking spin from it.

But I digress. If the press wants to be taken seriously, they need to get even the simplest facts straight, even if didactodorks like me can still figure out what they are trying to say.

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