The notion of an emoji getting a permanent deletion may cause you to feel a bit *sad face*, but we're sure you'll give a thumbs up to the reasoning behind this story.
Unicode, the group that looks after the ever-expanding world of emojis, was to release a batch of 72 new icons this month - including the hugely useful cowboy hat emoji, avocado emoji and terrifying clown emoji.
However, a proposed rifle emoji has been removed from the latest release after objections arose from emoji-using parties Apple and Microsoft.
According to Buzzfeed, debate over the suitability of the rifle emoji arose at a quarterly meeting between Unicode and its main user parties back in May. While the 'marksmanship emoji' rifle had been tabled as part of a series of Olympic emoji, set to celebrate this summer's Rio games, users from Apple and Microsoft protested at the inclusion of the emoji.
Apple has declined to comment on exactly why it was unhappy at the inclusion of the rifle, but other gun control groups had already protested the emoji, suggesting it wouldn't be a good idea to familiarise all emoji users with the image of a weapon.
Unicode President Mark Davis has since confirmed that the marksmanship emoji won't be gaining an inclusion in the new release as a fully-fledged, colourful icon, but will be included in Unicode 9.0 as a black and white symbol. Don't expect it to show up on the keyboards of your Apple, Android or Windows devices though.
And if you do happen to be wishing to discuss the marksmanship events of this summer's Rio games, you'll just have to stick to using good old fashioned words.
[Via: Buzzfeed]
