Guns mean a lot. But none translate to fun, joy or peace.
It has been a few years that Apple switched its gun emoji to a peaceful water pistol. While others have balked Apple's gun design in 2016, it turned out that they too want to opt for the non-lethal version of guns.
Then over the years, several companies quietly switched their firearm emoji for a peaceful water pistol.
And here Google has joined the trend and also replaces its gun emoji with the non-lethal alternative.
With more entering the bandwagon, the non-lethal gun is becoming emoji's "defacto design for the gun," said Emojipedia that announced the change. This should minimize cross-platform confusion.
Water pistols are chosen, mostly because they don't provoke violence. And they are also more visually interesting with their neon color.
With the change, Google has also updated its open source Noto Color Emoji repository with this pistol design. And through Google's EmojiCompat library, the company aims to roll the design out to all Android devices. This also allows Google to update emojis separately from OS updates.
Samsung, WhatsApp, Twitter and others have opted for water pistols instead of lethal guns. LG and HTC are also into water pistols as they have abandoned their respective custom emoji sets to use Google's. Facebook is also on the move to use its own version of water pistol.
While it seems that no one wants to be left on the opposite side of the force, Microsoft seems to have gone against all of them at first. The company opted to use revolver replacing its ray gun in 2016.
But on April 26th 2018, the company tweeted that it's evolving its emojis, and yes, also with a water pistol.