This news will probably have gun lovers in their feelings.
Google has announced that starting today, a new Android update rolling out will replace the gun emoji with a water pistol. Facebook will be following suit as well, according to a spokesperson for the social media giant revealed to Emojipedia. Microsoft is now the only company who will still use the gun emoji.
Yes, they are coming for your digital emoji guns.
The move by Google now allows their emojis to work with other platforms without incident. So if you send a friend a water pistol emoji from Android device it will now properly display on an iPhone. Now if only Apple could apply this to videos and photos sent from Android devices— but that’s a whole other issue.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is the only company who hasn’t gotten on board the progressive train with the likes of Google, Apple and eventually Facebook yet when it comes to replacing the gun emoji. Ironically the company first used a toy gun for its emoji but then switched it to a real revolver later. We won’t be shocked if they eventually did and joined in the fight to make a stand for proper gun control in the US.
Apple initially got the ball rolling back in 2016 when they pushed to have the rifle icon removed from the standardized emoji set. Google has toyed around (no pun intended) with the gun emoji since it first introduced it back in 2012. It has since gone through many changes; back in 2013 it was updated to a vintage pistol before being changed to a revolver from 2014 to 2017.
