A moon clip is a ring-shaped or star-shaped piece of metal designed to hold multiple cartridges together as a unit, for simultaneous insertion and extraction from a revolver cylinder. Moon clips may either hold an entire cylinder's worth of cartridges together, half a cylinder, or just two neighboring cartridges. The two-cartridge moon clips can be used for those revolvers that have an odd number of loading chambers such as five or seven and also for those revolvers that allow a shooter to mix both rimless and rimmed types of cartridges in one loading of the same cylinder.
Full and half moon clips loaded with .45 ACP and one Semiwadcutter .45 Auto Rim cartridge.
Smith & Wesson 1917 with .45 ACP moon clips and two auto rim cartridges
Rare Ruger Speed Six variant in 9mm Parabellum, which uses half-moon clips to chamber the rimless cartridges
Smith and Wesson Model 625 .45 ACP moon clips.
A revolver is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six cartridges, before needing to be reloaded, revolvers are commonly called six shooters or sixguns. Due to their rotating cylinder mechanism, they may also be called wheel guns.
Colt Single Action Army
Firing a Smith & Wesson Model 686 .357 Magnum
Detail of an 8-chambered matchlock revolver (Germany, c. 1580)
Colt Paterson 2nd belt model
