Getting your hands on a rifle emoji is about to get a lot harder for all smartphone owners thanks to Apple.
The Unicode Consortium proposed earlier this year to add a rifle emoji as part of the Unicode 9.0 release this year, but according to a new report, the controversial firearm won’t make the cut after Apple campaigned internally to have it removed.
During Unicode’s quarterly meeting in May, Apple moved to have the rifle killed, reports Buzzfeed. Sources at the meeting claim that the decision didn’t even receive push back from the other members, which also decided to remove the “modern pentathlon” emoji that depicts a man firing a pistol.
“Apple told the consortium it would not support a rifle on its platforms and asked for it not to be made into an emoji,” claims the report. Microsoft also allegedly spoke up with Apple about removing the rifle.
Unicode’s president Mark Davis confirmed that the rifle and modern pentathlon symbols were removed from the list of emoji. However, Davis said that they will still be added as unicode characters that appear as black and white symbols. Android and iOS emoji keyboards won’t make the symbols available, but they will be in the official database.
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
6 responses to “Apple is taking away your rifle (emoji)”
Because gun emojis kill people…
This feels kind of ridiculous….
What an absurd waste of time. Cars kill more people than anything or how about these
False. Heart disease kills more people than anything else.
Are they taking away the alcohol, drugs, automobile and fast food ones too? Because those kill a hell of a lot more people than guns.
I’m as liberal as they come, and even I think this is silly as F. Quite possibly the most pointless thing I have heard in a while.