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Pistol emoji

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Evolution of the pistol emoji as rendered by stock Android systems. From left to right: 2012 (pistol), 2013 (blunderbuss), 2014 (revolver), 2017 (revolver) and 2018 (water gun).

The Pistol emoji (🔫) is an emoji defined by the Unicode Consortium as depicting a "handgun" or "revolver".[1]

It was historically displayed as a handgun on most computers (although Google once used a blunderbuss);[2] as early as 2013, Microsoft chose to replace the glyph with a ray gun,[3] and in 2016 Apple replaced their glyph with a water pistol.[4] Since then, its rendering has been inconsistent across vendors. Microsoft changed its glyph back to an icon of a revolver during 2016 and 2017, before switching it to a (differently-styled) ray gun; in 2018, Google and Samsung changed their devices' rendering of the emoji to a water pistol,[2] as well as the websites Facebook and Twitter. In 2024, Twitter (by then known as "X") chose to restore the glyph of a handgun, although instead of a revolver it used a semi-automatic M1911.[5]

Development and usage history

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The pistol emoji was originally included in proprietary emoji sets from SoftBank Mobile and au by KDDI.[6] In 2007, Apple encoded them using SoftBank's Private Use Area scheme.[7] As part of a set of characters sourced from SoftBank, au by KDDI, and NTT Docomo emoji sets, the gun emoji was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 under the name "Pistol".[8] Global popularity of emojis then surged in the early to mid-2010s.[9] The pistol emoji has been included in the Unicode Technical Standard for emoji (UTS #51) since its first edition (Emoji 1.0) in 2015.[8]

Character information
Preview 🔫
Unicode name PISTOL
Encodings decimal hex
Unicode 128299 U+1F52B
UTF-8 240 159 148 171 F0 9F 94 AB
UTF-16 55357 56619 D83D DD2B
GB 18030 148 57 231 51 94 39 E7 33
Numeric character reference 🔫 🔫
Shift JIS (au by KDDI)[10] 246 227 F6 E3
Shift JIS (SoftBank 3G)[10] 247 83 F7 53
7-bit JIS (au by KDDI)[6] 118 101 76 65
Emoji shortcode[11] :gun:
Google name (pre-Unicode)[12] PISTOL
CLDR text-to-speech name[13] water pistol
Google substitute string[12] [ピストル]

Controversy and glyph changes

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Drawing of a revolver
Drawing of a water pistol
Original (left) and 2018 revised (right) Twitter designs, showing the transition from a revolver to a water pistol[14]

In August 2016, Apple announced that in iOS 10, their rendering of the pistol emoji would be changed from a revolver to a water pistol;[15][16] Apple had previously put pressure on the Unicode Consortium not to approve a rifle emoji,[17] with one consortium member quoted as saying "engineers that are concerned about standards and internationalization issues [...] now have to do something more in line with Apple or Google's marketing teams".[18] Apple's change of glyph was criticized by others, among them the editor of Emojipedia, who did not support the change because it could lead to messages appearing differently to the receiver than the sender had intended.[19]

One day after the glyph alteration by Apple, Microsoft pushed an update to Windows 10 that changed its longstanding depiction of the pistol emoji as a toy ray-gun to a real revolver.[3] Microsoft said to Engadget: "We will continue to work with the Unicode Consortium to refine and update glyphs that reflects [sic] customer needs, feedback and supports a consistent system that works across the digital world".[3]

Insider's Rob Price said Apple's "plan to combat gun violence by changing an emoji" created the potential for "serious miscommunication across different platforms", and asked "What if a joke sent from an Apple user to a Google user is misconstrued because of differences in rendering? Or if a genuine threat sent by a Google user to an Apple user goes unreported because it is taken as a joke?"[20] Margaret Rhodes of Wired said that "Apple's squirt gun emoji hides a big political statement."[21] The Collegiate Times said that "the use of the firearm emoji does not always indicate gun violence."[22] Jonathan Zittrain, in The New York Times, said that Apple should be no more responsible if someone uses a gun image in the abstract than if someone happens to type the word "gun."[23] As late as December 2017, Apple and WhatsApp were the only vendors using a squirt gun; Google, Microsoft, Samsung, HTC, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, EmojiOne and Mozilla's emoji sets used a revolver, whereas LG and emojidex used a pistol.[24] By March 2018, Samsung had also adopted a squirt gun.[25]


By April 2018, following the Parkland high school shooting and subsequent mass demonstrations in the United States against gun violence, several companies changed their renderings of the emoji to a water gun;[26] at that time Apple, Samsung, WhatsApp and Twitter used squirt gun glyphs, while Google, Microsoft, Facebook, EmojiOne, Facebook Messenger, HTC and Mozilla used revolvers, and emojidex and LG used pistols.[27]

By mid-2019, the pistol emoji was rendered as a revolver in the Facebook Messenger, HTC, Mozilla, and Softbank emoji sets, a pistol in the LG and Docomo emoji sets, and a squirt gun in the Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook emoji sets;[28] this remained the case through 2020,[29] 2021,[30] 2022,[31] and 2023.[32]

In July 2024, the pistol emoji on X (formerly Twitter) was changed back to represent a gun, with site owner Elon Musk saying "Nerfing of the gun emoji matches rise of the woke mind virus, as a core tenet is equating fake harm with real harm."[33]

Criminal charges for use of pistol emoji

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In 2015, a 12-year-old girl in Virginia faced felony charges, including "computer harassment", for threatening messages she had posted on Instagram that included the pistol emoji, alongside the knife and bomb emoji.[34][35][36] In Brooklyn, New York the same year, a 17-year-old boy was charged for use of the pistol emoji in part of what was construed to be a threat. Elizabeth Nolan Brown, in Reason Magazine, said "Cops were dispatched to Aristy's house, which they searched, finding marijuana and a firearm. In addition to charges for making "terroristic threats" and "aggravated harassment," Aristy was also charged with drug and weapon possession. He was subsequently arraigned, with bail set at $150,000."[37]

In 2016, a 22-year-old man in Drôme, France was jailed for 3 months and fined €1000 by a Valence court after sending his ex-girlfriend a gun emoji.[38][39]

References

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  1. ^ Unicode Consortium. "Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs". Unicode.org.
  2. ^ a b Keith Broni (July 23, 2024). "X Redesigns Water Pistol Emoji Back To A Firearm".
  3. ^ a b c Low, Cherlynn (August 4, 2016). "Microsoft just changed its toy gun emoji to a real pistol". Engadget. Retrieved October 19, 2017.
  4. ^ Rebecca Hersher (August 2, 2016). "Apple Ditches Pistol Emoji In Favor Of Water Gun". NPR.
  5. ^ @elonmusk (2024-07-19). "[in reply to a tweet from X employee: "update announcement 📢 on x dot com (the website), the gun emoji was returned back into its rightful form: an m1911 🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫"] Fixed on web, soon to be fixed in rendering on mobile!" (Tweet). Retrieved 2024-07-21 – via Twitter.
  6. ^ a b Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter. "Emoji Symbols: Background Data—Background data for Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols" (PDF). UTC L2/10-132.
  7. ^ "Apple iPhone OS 2.2". Emojipedia.
  8. ^ a b "🔫 Pistol". Emojipedia. Retrieved December 27, 2021.
  9. ^ "Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is…". Oxford Dictionaries Blog. November 16, 2015. Archived from the original on July 10, 2017. Retrieved July 28, 2017.
  10. ^ a b Unicode Consortium. "Emoji Sources". Unicode Character Database.
  11. ^ JoyPixels. "Emoji Alpha Codes". Emoji Toolkit.
  12. ^ a b Android Open Source Project (2009). "GMoji Raw". Skia Emoji.
  13. ^ Unicode, Inc (3 June 2022). "Annotations". Common Locale Data Repository.
  14. ^ Deahl, Dani (12 April 2018). "Twitter's new emoji update ditches the pistol in favor of a water gun". The Verge. Retrieved 21 August 2024.
  15. ^ Kelly, Heather (August 1, 2016). "Apple replaces the pistol emoji with a water gun". CNNMoney.
  16. ^ "Water pistol emoji replaces revolver as Apple enters gun violence debate". the Guardian. August 2, 2016.
  17. ^ Hern, Alex (20 June 2016). "Rifle emoji blocked from phones 'after pressure from Apple'". The Guardian.
  18. ^ "Thanks to Apple's Influence, You're Not Getting a Rifle Emoji". BuzzFeed News. 17 June 2016.
  19. ^ Baraniuk, Chris (2016-08-05). "Apple urged to rethink gun emoji change". BBC News Online. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
  20. ^ Price, Rob (2016-08-02). "There's a huge problem with Apple's plan to combat gun violence by changing an emoji". Insider. Retrieved 2020-07-22.
  21. ^ Rhodes, Margaret. "Apple's New Squirt Gun Emoji Hides a Big Political Statement". Wired – via www.wired.com.
  22. ^ George, Emily (16 October 2016). "Removing pistol emoji an empty shot at free expression". Collegiate Times.
  23. ^ Zittrain, Jonathan (August 16, 2016). "Opinion | Apple's Emoji Gun Control". The New York Times.
  24. ^ "Pistol Emoji (2017)". Emojipedia.
  25. ^ "Pistol Emoji (February 2018)". Emojipedia.
  26. ^ "Gun emoji replaced with toy water pistol across platforms". ABC News. April 29, 2018 – via www.abc.net.au.
  27. ^ "Pistol Emoji (April 2018)". Emojipedia.
  28. ^ "Pistol Emoji (2019)". Emojipedia.
  29. ^ "Pistol Emoji (2020)". Emojipedia.
  30. ^ "Pistol Emoji (2021)". Emojipedia.
  31. ^ "Pistol Emoji (2022)". Emojipedia.
  32. ^ "Pistol Emoji (2023)". Emojipedia.
  33. ^ ""Woke Mind Virus": Elon Musk Shares How Gun Emoji Changed Over Years Across Platforms". NDTV.com. Retrieved 21 August 2024.
  34. ^ Nolan Brown, Elizabeth (29 February 2016). "Child Faces Criminal Charges After Using Weapon Emojis on Instagram". reason.com. Reason. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  35. ^ Culver, David (23 December 2015). "Middle-Schooler Facing Felony Charge After Allegedly Sending Threats With Emojis on Instagram".
  36. ^ Justin Jouvenal (2016-02-27). "A 12-year-old girl is facing criminal charges for using certain emoji. She's not alone". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409.
  37. ^ Nolan Brown, Elizabeth (27 January 2015). "Brooklyn Teen Arrested for Threatening Use of Emoji". Reason Magazine. Reason. Retrieved 30 March 2022.
  38. ^ "A Guy in France Got Three Months in Prison for Texting His Ex the Gun Emoji". www.vice.com. 31 March 2016.
  39. ^ Samuel, Henry (March 31, 2016). "Frenchman jailed for sending ex-girlfriend gun emoji in threatening text messages". The Sydney Morning Herald.
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