Mikey Campbell
A proposed rifle emoji initially set for release as part of Unicode 9.0 was removed from consideration after Unicode Consortium delegates representing Apple and Microsoft expressed disapproval of its inclusion, a report said Friday.
While the decision to nix a rifle emoji from the upcoming standard was unanimous, sources who attended Unicode's quarterly May meeting said Apple led the charge to quash its inclusion, reports BuzzFeed News. Rifle emoji variants had already moved through the encoding process on their way to release this month, but Apple said it would not support their inclusion. Microsoft seconded Apple's contention.
Apple is not the first to take issue with the now dead firearm emoji. A UK gun control lobby protested the same issue after Unicode 9.0 candidates were announced last year, saying the inclusion of a rifle glyph is tantamount to familiarizing users with a weapon through an international standard. In response, Unicode President Mark Davis said the emoji was designed as part of a pack of Olympic sport graphics.
Interestingly, another Olympic emoji illustrating the modern pentathlon, which incorporates pistol shooting as a sanctioned event, was also removed from consideration.
As AppleInsider reported last week, the rifle character was original set to debut in Unicode 9.0 on June 21 when the standard officially launches on June 21.
As it stands, the rifle and modern pentathlon assets will be included in Unicode 9.0 as characters without corresponding emoji representations. In other words, Unicode is adding a monochrome rifle symbol to its database, but will not incorporate a glyph into the dataset used to create emoji keyboards.
AppleInsider Staff
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
101 Comments
And this changes the world how??? It won't stop any violence. I guess I'm just not seeing the point of this. I know terrible things have happened recently, things that should have never happened and too many innocent people are getting killed but this isn't the answer IMO.
So is Apple going to start removing games with violence from the App Store. Or iTunes media that contains violence?
Btw, the Orlando killer was investigated by the FBI 3 times. Why isn't that what everyone is focusing on? How the hell did the FBI let this guy go?
That'll save lives.
While they're at it, remove the pile of poo emoji, I'm tired of stepping in poop on the sidewalk.
Apparently guns are politically incorrect, but not the people who use those guns to kill other people. What a fucked up culture we have created where inanimate objects are the cause of hatred and violence, not the human beings making use of those inanimate objects.
This is just plan ridiculous. Meanwhile, Apple, Google, etc have business dealings with countries who have punished gays in the past. If you want to do something, stand up to this at least.