The new water pistol emoji and the old gun emoji by Apple. Photograph: Apple.
Apple has replaced its hand gun emoji with a water pistol – reflecting growing despair in America and worldwide over gun crime.
The change comes in the wake of continuing gun violence in the US, including the killing of two black men by police and the resulting spate of deadly attacks against officers.
The new green and orange emoji, with white plastic trigger, looks distinctly like a harmless toy and will replace the black and silver revolver.
The change, which comes into effect from September, was announced as Apple released 100 new emoji, including a rainbow flag, female athletes, police officers and construction workers and single-parent families.
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Apple has previously pushed back against violent emojis. Earlier this year Apple and Microsoft successfully argued against the addition of a rifle emoji.
Via The Guardian. A longer, more thoughtful look at this change is on Upworthy.
I don’t use emoticons, I find them annoying, but I’m in favour of this change, and I wish all the weapon emoticons would also be disappeared.
I’m not going to read the comments anywhere, because so far, today is going well…..
“today is going well”: Yer staying in bed, deep in a cavern on another planet, with the blankets pulled up over yer head ?
I agree with you Caine & support the water-gun replacing the more realistic gun. But wow am I blown away by the 2nd-to-last paragraph:
It’s only 2016 -- why do they think we need feminine police officers & athletes & construction workers? We don’t have any feminine construction workers in North America, do we? And what’s with single-parent families?
test
re: emoji
my emoji virtual keyboard updates itself
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??????????