The right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, but not in your text messages.
As a tech company, Apple doesn’t have an obvious stake in the gun control debate. But a recently announced change to its emoji library suggests the Cupertino company is taking a stance on the issue.
In fall, when the new version of its operating system rolls out, what was previously a pistol emoji will be replaced by a green squirt gun.
In its announcement about the new set of emojis, Apple did not explicitly mention the gun. In addition to touting new options that make existing emojis more diverse and a rainbow flag, it referenced “beautiful redesigns of popular emoji.” The only emoji that was a redesign of an existing emoji was the squirt gun.
In this case, Apple is reinterpreting how it will “read” the pistol emoji. Instead of depicting it as a metal revolver, it will show the green toy water pistol. Emoji encyclopedia Emojipedia’s entry on the pistol character suggests it will still look like a gun if you view it on most other devices and platforms.
It’s not the first time Apple has opted against a gun emoji: In June, Apple asked the Unicode Consortium to exclude a scoped shooting rifle from the upcoming set of emojis. Unicode complied, and the rifle was scrapped.