New emoji are typically proposed by the Unicode Consortium and approved for the next version of the spec without much fuss, but a rifle emoji proposed for Unicode 9.0 apparently ran into opposition from two major members of the consortium: Apple and Microsoft.
According to a report from Buzzfeed, Apple objected to the idea of introducing a second gun emoji on its platforms, and Microsoft joined in. The decision to remove the rifle emoji, as well as a second "pentathlon" emoji depicting a man holding a pistol among other athletes, was apparently unanimous.
“Nobody in the room seemed to mind not encoding the rifle,” said a Unicode Consortium member present during the discussion.
The two characters will still be part of the Unicode spec, but they'll be classed as black-and-white "symbols" instead of regular emoji. Companies that want to add them to their emoji keyboards still can (Google already integrated both into the Android N betas), but they may or may not be supported on other platforms. Both characters were originally included because they were parts of Olympic sports, according to Unicode President Mark Davis.
Apple has historically been a bit conservative about the more violent emoji—for quite a while, the gun, knife, and a few others were excluded from the macOS emoji picker even though the OS could display them just fine and they were included on the iOS emoji keyboard.
The final version of the Unicode 9.0 spec is scheduled to be released on June 21. Google and Microsoft have already included Unicode 9.0 emoji in the OS updates they're releasing this fall, and Apple will presumably do the same when it's ready.
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