Plan for Progress  

A magazine is the storage area and feeding device for ammunition in a firearm which is attached to a repeating firearm. When a gun holder fires a gun, the magazine works by moving the cartridges stored in it into a location that it can be fed into the chamber to create impact. A removable magazine is normally called a ‘clip’ and are heavily regulated by gun control laws because it is an important piece of most repeating firearm.

Gun magazines are made in many shapes and sizes such as bolt action express rifles, that contain only a minimum amount of rounds to machine guns that can hold hundreds of rounds. The guns that can utilize a wide variety of magazine usually use a box or drum magazine and some handguns can even feed from both magazines and belts. The most popular type of magazine in modern firearms are the detachable box type magazines. This cartridge in this magazine is stored in either the column in a staggered zig zag style or with the bullet placed one above the other. When the firearm cycles, then the cartridges are shifted to the top of the magazine by another follower driven by spring tension to either a side by side or a single feed position.

Certain gun magazines such as the single or multiple tubular magazine are usually found on most lever action rifles, and pump action shotguns whether round or flat nose. These magazines hold cartridges end to end inside of a spring loaded tube, running parallel to the barrel or in the buttstock and is normally directly attached to the firearm when being used. The main issue with tubular magazines was that when the bullet tip makes impact with the primer of the cartridge ahead of it during recoil, it would often times catch fire which made it very unsafe to use so it was made obsolete within armed forces when the pointed ‘splitzer’ bullets came into use.

There are also cylindrical designed magazines such as drum and rotary magazines which has a larger capacity than box magazines. Drum magazines are placed mainly in light machines guns like the Heckler & Koch MG36, but these magazines are less reliable and complicated. In some drum magazines, the cylindrical chamber pushes the loose rounds into an exit slot while the cartridge is stored parallel to the axis of rotation. When the magazine is loaded, then a mechanical section forces the partition against the rounds. A single staggered column is pushed by a follower through a curved path. From there the rounds enter the vertical riser either from a single or dual drums. Other types of magazines include, Pan and Helical. There are also exceptionally high capacity magazines which are designed to hold way more cartridges that the regular size but those magazines are prohibited. Magazine capacity is often decreased by the design of the firearm, like for example internal, tubular, or rotary ones. A lot of pistols and rifle magazines classified as “high capacity” by gun regulatory laws are in fact the factory standard magazines were initially designed for use with their respective firearms.