On a modern computer, every character you type into your computer be it English, Chinese, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs or Emojis are represented by a Unicode codepoint. The Unicode consortium decides what should be included into this specification after being lobbied by the public, governments and corporations.

In 2010 the Unicode consortium published the Unicode 6.0 which added a pistol Emoji (?) to the official Unicode specifications. Unicode does not define what a character looks like, that is up to font makers, but they define what the symbol should look like. In the case of the pistol emoji (code point U+1F52B), they commented that is should resemble a “handgun, revolver”.

Yesterday Apple stated they will be replacing the pistol emoji symbol, which was a revolver, with a water pistol. The mainstream media are hailing this as a victory against gun violence. In reality this is just a means to suppress gun culture. See the above photo for a comparison with the old and the new Apple pistol emoji.

Meanwhile, the latest version of MIcrosoft WIndows 10 has just replaced their hideous Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 pistol emoji (a so called “ray gun”) with a cartoon revolver.

So we win one, and lose another. Earlier this year Microsoft and Apple successfully lobbied to prevent the Unicode consortium from adding a rifle emoji along with new sports emojis.