Does the right to bear arms apply to emoji arms? It's actually a somewhat serious question; activist nonprofit New Yorkers Against Gun Violence aims (excuse the pun) to disarm the iPhone by pressuring Apple's CEO to remove the gun icon from its emoji catalog.
"The iPhone is ubiquitous. [Guns are] on the iPhone as an option," the executive director of NYAGV, Leah Barrett, told Fast Company. "We thought this was a way to bring attention to the issue [of gun violence]."
The activists encourage people to tweet at Apple's CEO and ask for the gun emoji to be removed, using the hashtag #DisarmTheiPhone. However, Fast Company cautions, "If a company like Apple removes words from that language, even if they’re technically pictures, isn't it censorship? How far does this linguistic adjustment go? If we type the letters G-U-N should they be autocorrected to S-U-N, P-U-N, or F-U-N?" Well? Jeva Lange
The Week
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