Dr. John Lott has his newest piece at Fox News on Apple’s decision to replace its emoji picture of a handgun with a water pistol. The piece starts this way:
Apple’s next iPhone and iPad operating system will no longer feature an emoji picture of a handgun. In its place will be an emoji of a green, plastic squirt gun.
There is nothing particularly threatening about the current handgun picture. You only see the side of the gun; it isn’t pointed at the reader or anyone else. No bullets are even being fired. The whole idea to drop the handgun emoji came about through a lobbying effort started by New Yorkers Against Gun Violence.
The bomb, sword, knife, and axe emojis will stay. Apparently, a bomb with a lit fuse is OK but a nonthreatening handgun is too much.
So do you feel safer now?
Apple isn’t the first tech company to be accused of liberal political bias. This year, Facebook was found to be leaving conservative sources out of its list of trending news stories.
Google’s news searches have also favored Hillary Clinton and liberal sources.
Apple is a member of a non-profit organization called the Unicode Consortium, which sets a standard so that other computers know when your computer has sent them an emoji smiling face or a gun. Each computer operating system then has discretion in terms of how that emoji will actually look on your computer.
Apple’s replacement of a handgun with a water pistol isn’t its first foray into political correctness on guns.
This past June, Apple successfully campaigned against the Unicode Consortium when it wanted to create a rifle emoji. The rifle was being given serious consideration since rifle shooting is part of this summer’s Olympic Games in Brazil.
Those who support the right to self-defense might be forgiven for believing that there is a “War on Guns,” with a concerted attack by everyone from Apple to the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by the likes of billionaires Michael Bloomberg and George Soros in producing misleading information on guns to Hillary Clinton promising to again make it possible for government to ban guns. . . .
The rest of the piece is available here. This is an interesting fact that it would have been nice to know when the piece was being written: “Apple spends $700K/year on keeping CEO Tim Cook safe.“
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