When Apple releases its new operating system, iOS10, later in the year, the company will do away with the handgun emoji and replace it with a water pistol as a part of the introduction and redesign of more than 100 emojis.
Included in the new roll out of emojis, Apple will include emojis of female athletes and business professionals, but the largest change, which appears to show the company’s anti-Second Amendment stance, will be the removal of the gun emoji that will be replaced by the green water pistol. The decision appears to be made by Apple and not Unicode, which is the company that writes the standards for the way emoji characters are encoded.
People were quick to point out the hypocrisy of the move, considering China uses universally derided labor practices, along with the stupidity of the political correctness:
Apple did not comment on why they are doing away with the handgun emoji and replacing it with a water pistol emoji, but did say that the new emoji releases focused on diversity as well as gender equality.
Gun control advocates have supported Apple’s decision to do away with the handgun emoji.
Jean Hannah Edelstein wrote for The Guardian, that it was a “wise” decision to get rid of the emoji and that people should never be in the possession of guns:
“When it comes to guns we need to stop being gentle and instead take as hard a line as those who disagree with us: there is no reason for people to possess weapons that are expressly designed to kill other people. It’s not possible to engage in rational debate with people who disagree.”
“Changing the emoji isn’t a sign that political correctness has gone awry. It’s a smart, small part in the battle – which we’re presently losing – to keep Americans safe. We need to change the conversation to one that’s about prevention of deaths rather than preservation of laws that made sense to a group of men from England in 1776 and which simply don’t make any sense 240 years later.”
Apple also recently put pressure on Unicode to prevent them from releasing a rifle emoji that was set to be a part of Unicode 9.0’s emoji release on June 21.
[revad2]
