Like, yes, it's a magazine, but colloquially it's a clip. Pop culture has given these objects two names.
It's not a mark of failure to use the term most people are familiar with.
People know what a "silencer" is because that's what it's called in movies and TV. Much fewer people know that it's actually called a "suppressor".
Meet the audience where they are.
Even if we didn’t, it’s a journalist’s job to inform. Using “clip” isn’t just a colloquialism — it refers to a different thing entirely, and is incorrect.
If they genuinely believe the public is not familiar with “magazine”, they can and should explain the terminology.
However, I sincerely doubt these individuals — especially given their Vice/Motherboard background — knew the correct terminology in the first place.
The last thing I want to do is contribute traffic to vapid outrage-bait Vice/Motherboard-style journalism, and HN has been spammed with their articles for days now.
edit: If Tom's Hardware ran an article about a laptop that has 2TB of "memory", I'd be skeptical of their ability to give me the proper information. If I read an article about welfare that calls Medicaid "handouts", I'm going to realize they aren't being objective.
So no, you are incorrect.
Calling a suppressor a "silencer" is just incorrect.
"Throw me a clip!" Or picking up "clips" of ammo in FPS games.
Yes, mag is becoming more common now, but clip was absolutely common.
This is precisely the point. Perhaps there is something illegal about these sales but why should I assume this is the case when the author incorrectly implies the existence of gun ads itself is illegal and use video game and movie terminology to talk about them?
"Full clip, do you wanna mess with this?" (Guru and Premier, 1999)
"I'm like two magazines fully-loaded to your one" (ibid.)
But that is not even remotely relevant to the topic. The original article don't even use the word "silencer", nor "suppressor", let alone "clip".
A lack of precision is only really a problem when it would cause confusion. In the context of the article, nobody is confused about what they mean by "silencer". A good example of this is that, even while complaining about calling them "silencers" rather than suppressors, the top comment still didn't have any confusion about what was being discussed.
People are confused as to believing the idea that any device which makes a gun silent exists.
Movie hackers don't work like that because nobody involved knows how computers work, even NCIS had dedicated Computer Consultants for that kind of stuff, but real "hacking" is boring AF, and most people are willing to put that kind of "reality" aside for a better narrative.