The Gun Emoji is Dead, Long Live the Water Pistol Emoji

Your phones are changing with the new iOS 10 update, Apple has decided to nix the ‘Revolver‘ emoji and instead replace it with a cute little water gun.

That gun emoji, despite being an innocuous bundle of pixels has caused some trouble. A virginia girl faced felony charges after potentially threatening her middle school via an instagram comment that read, “Watch out, I’m coming” with three of the weapon emojis: the gun, the knife, and the bomb.

The bomb emoji is certainly of the, “Acme” variety, in that it is clearly a cartoon (so don’t worry I don’t think this guy is going anywhere) but the gun emojis and the knife emojis are decidedly different.

This isn’t an isolated incident either, as there was also a Brooklyn teen that did something similar.

In an interesting twist in Emojigate 2016 – French courts ruled that tweeting the pistol emoji is a legit death threat, charging a 22 year old man to three months of jail time and a hefty amount in damages.

iOS 10 is coming later this fall and there is a public beta out as of this writing, so if you’re eager to axe the pistol you can be an early adopter.

Time will tell if other companies will follow suit though, as Samsung, Twitter and Facebook are still locked-and-loaded when it comes to their gun emojis.

So with that, we bid you fond farewell, Gun Emoji – you’ve caused far too many kids to have lapses in bad judgement.

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