Protests from Apple and Microsoft mean there won't be a rifle emoji

With the unstoppable growth of chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and the like, emoji have become an incredible phenomenon. The Unicode Consortium is due to publish the Unicode 9.0 spec tomorrow, and it seems that objections from Apple and Microsoft means we're not going to see a rifle emoji included.

The intervention is slightly surprising, yet not entirely unexpected. With the large number of high-profile mass-shootings such as in Orlando, debate about guns has come to the fore once again and the censorship of emoji is perhaps not completely unexpected. But at the same time, there is already a pistol emoji and there are not -- yet -- calls for it to be removed.

The plan had been to introduce the rifle as part of a series of emoji relating to winter sport but there was opposition to this. Apple's objections have stopped the emoji in its tracks, according to a report from Buzzfeed. A member of the Unicode consortium is quoted as saying: "I heard Apple speak up about it and also Microsoft".

The intervention and subsequent decision was a very last minute thing, and this means that the rifle character will still be included in Unicode 9.0, but only as black and white images. Emojipedia explains:

[Modern Pentathlon and Sporting Rifle] will not be recommended for emoji presentation by vendors when the final version of Unicode 9 is released next month.

Due to the late stage that these were removed; the actual characters will still be encoded (with the same codepoints used in the beta of Unicode 9), but only as pictographs. The result will be these are unlikely to be displayed in color, nor shown on emoji keyboards.

The pistol emoji is an interesting case in point. It's included in a very recognizable form on numerous platforms, but Microsoft has chosen to implement it as a toy-like laser pistol. This is somewhat indicative of the company's somewhat conservative nature and its unwillingness to appear controversial. Apple's gun emoji, however, is a revolver, and this makes the rifle objections slightly strange.

Photo credit: Yuliyan Velchev / Shutterstock