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What happened to the rifle emoji?
Should there be a rifle emoji?
According to BuzzFeed, Apple and Microsoft say no. A new update to emoji, the series of tiny images available through most operating systems, is due to be released at the end of June by the Unicode Consortium, of which both Apple and Microsoft are voting members. And up to a relatively late stage of planning, the list of new emoji included both a rifle, and an image which showed a man shooting a pistol.
The update is partly themed around the Rio Olympics, and features a series of medals, boxing gloves, fencers and a goal net. (There's also a juggler, perplexingly, despite the fact that juggling is not an Olympic sport.) The rifle was meant to symbolise competitive shooting, while the man shooting a pistol appears in an image of the "modern pentathalon".
A statement on the Emojipedia website notes that both have been "bumped" and are "no longer coming to an emoji keyboard near you".
The rifle emoji in particular has been controversial since it was first suggested. A British gun control group spoke out against the gun’s inclusion to the BBC last October, saying:
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