Apple Replaces Gun Emoji with Water Pistol

A surprising new emoji replacement is coming in the latest Apple update for iOS 10.

A whole wave of new emojis are coming to Apple products with iOS 10, but there are some emoji replacements that you might not expect.

Instead of using a real handgun as a emoji. iOS 10 will replace the weapon with a much less threatening green water pistol. The replacement is likely in response to recent events regarding gun violence and all of the debates regarding gun control.

There was a social media campaign, #DisarmTheiPhone, that called for Apple to remove the gun emoji, but the tech company didn’t not release a comment regarding the emoji replacement, at least not yet. Earlier in the year, an Olympic-inspired rifle emoji was shot down by both Apple and Microsoft, likely for the same reasons that Apple is deciding to replace its current handgun emoji.

This won’t be the only new emoji with the latest software update for Apple products, however. According to Unicode Consortium, the new emojis will be much more gender-diverse and include things like a female weightlifter and even a rainbow flag emoji.

The use of a water pistol will likely make messages much less threatening. After all, the use of the gun emoji has actually led to people going to prison for sending it via a text message. In fact, a man in France was sent to jail for three months for sending an ex-girlfriend the gun emoji.

It’s only a small change to their list of emojis, but the decision to change the handgun is definitely making a lot of noise.