Apple have been urged to rethink a gun emoji change made last month. Apple, in response to a further round of shootings in the U.S., altered an emoji of handgun to a seemingly less offensive water pistol. For some campaigners, concerned about the accessibility of firearms and violence in the U.S., the new graphic — if sent to an unsuspecting person — could still be misconstrued as a symbol of violence. In addition, campaigners are concerned that any graphic resembling any kind of firearm is insensitive and inappropriate in 2016.
The main call for a further change has come from the Emojipedia website. The custodians of all things emoji argue that the sanitized symbol may still appear as a lifelike gun, especially in messages received by non-iOS users.
The before and after pictures to the emoji are shown below:
Quoted by the BBC, Apple has said it wants to “ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere”.
Despite the modification Jeremy Burge, editor of Emojipedia, told the BBC: “The thing is, emojis already look different on different platforms and it does cause confusion. “When we’re dealing with guns and toys as a comparison, that’s a whole new level of problems that we have there.”
The change has also bee poorly received on social media, with some thinking the change still hints of danger to others mocking the change:
Ugo Daté (@ugodate): “Can you imagine if everyone had these instead of real guns? We could go from Dead for being black to Wet.”
AMIR® (@yoitzmir):@ “Whats the difference?”
jessicaღ (@xojessmarie): “cause we can have gun control in emojis, but not real life.”
The Twitter feed on the subject is extensive.
Perhaps oddly, in light of the Apple decision, Microsoft has announced this week that its toy gun symbol is to be redesigned as a more realistic-looking firearm.
