The decision by Apple executives to replace a cartoon revolver emoji with one of a squirt gun is a “combination of childishness and anti-gun demagoguery,” the Second Amendment Foundation said in response to the announcement. 
“This doesn’t just border on the absurd, it completely crosses the boundary,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This is the sort of intolerance that comes from letting the gun prohibition lobby get away with demonization and hate.” Apple announced that the emoji swap would happen in September. It’s part of an update of the iPhone and iPad iOS 10, and the change has already been cheered by anti-gun groups.
“Now that they have bullied Apple into changing its emoji from a cartoon revolver to a water pistol,” Gottlieb wondered, “how long will it take the gun banners to demand that the squirt gun be removed? “While this story seems ridiculous on its face,” he continued, “it raises alarms about the totalitarian mindset behind this kind of decision. This is no longer just about the Second Amendment, it’s about First Amendment rights, too. It shows that the gun prohibition lobby is so strident that they want to ban images of fake guns.
“There is no doubt that anti-gun comments by President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton help further this type of atmosphere,” Gottlieb said. “This is a perfect example of politically correct extremism, and at what point does even a tolerant society like ours need to draw the line? “Maybe gun owners should think twice about buying any more Apple products,” he concluded, “unless they include a rotten Apple emoji.”
Probably NOT Such a Good Idea. The RCMP of Canada Discovered that the Encryption on Blackberry (an “OS”/ Android) LAST Encryption Update was in 2010. And is One of The Easiest Systems to Hack Into.
Every liberal Ive ever know that is involved in Media , the Art, publishing and all the none rational idea development types have used Apple products. So the type of OS you use depends on what sort of group you listen too and if you use rational thought processes to solve everyday problems in your daily life. Personally I don’t care for Apple products and the so-called advantage they are supposed to have over other OSs and produces.But hey its a free world still so use whatever toots your horn!
I’m surprised the water gun isn’t rainbow colored. The apple execs need to keep a water gun under there pillow in case someone tries to break in to there mansions. Actually they probably have armed bodyguards.
@ tex
I think the “Water Pistol” is a Metaphor for the NRA. But WHAT the Representation Means, is Anyone’s Guess?
This is one more example of what is important to liberals, the problem is not important, the emoji is. Problem being the lack of enforcement and prosecution of current/existing laws.
Dont you’ll know that liberal gun grabbers all fly in the same flock. To bad we cant hunt that sorry flock during duck hunting season! Maybe we could send them the way of the passenger pigeons or the dodos.
No Apple phones for me.
No Facebook, Twitter or SnapChat either.
Every American citizen, who supports our 1st & 2nd Amendment rights under the US Constitution, needs to wear a Navy blue shirt, every Friday to work and also to the voting booth this November.
Let’s let folks know who we are by showing them.
I don’t care that when I up grade my phone it will not be a apple I know that I won’t hurt there bottom line any but sometimes standing your ground for you believes means something to me
Asinine, any questions?
This is ridiculous. It will take around 30 seconds for someone to create a realistic handgun emoji. In reality, it’s probably already been done.
You would have to daft to believe this will even noticed by anyone, much less have any effect.
Approximately One Billion Apple products were Sold World Wide in 2015! And there’s Roughly Five Million NRA Members, or approximately 0.00005% of their Sales. I don’t think that they even come close to being SCARED by the NRA!
@ Leveller,
Epic fail! Aside from the fact no one said a word about the NRA, the comment was made by the SAF and yet directed towards all gun owners which is in the billions worldwide. That easily and exceedingly surpasses Apple product owners.
Incidentally you are also wrong in that Apple did not sell “One Billion” products in 2015. More accurately they celebrated the sale of their one billionth device which was finally sold in the year 2015. That still took years to reach and thus the cause for their celebration.
You really had to go out of your way to be this wrong – which as you should know – increases your embarrassment factor exponentially.
@ G-Man
Even if it’s Dollar Value and Not Products, Percentages remain the same. And WHAT Gun Right Organization CLAIMS to be the Premiere Defender of Gun Right and Second Amendment Values in the USA and the World?
@ Leveller,
Are you even an adult, because your responses tend to lead me to now think you are a child somewhere about middle school age? At no point in our conversation on either side did “Dollar Value” ever enter into the equation. Nevertheless, your latest post still made even less sense than your original comment.
Your words actually have to matter and count for something in a conversation – otherwise you render the entire process pointless; just as you’ve done here. Your intelligence level notwithstanding, even if I did allow you to alter the meaning of words to force your narrative, your math equation is simply factually wrong.
When words do matter, the NRA is still the NRA, the SAF is still the SAF, and total “gun owners” worldwide will always far exceed both those memberships. Furthermore, regardless whether you swap a billion Apple products for a billion Apple “dollars”, it would still never mathematically calculate out to exceed the billions (with an “s”) of “gun owners” worldwide – which is what the article actually cited – and not just the “NRA” members.
You were the one that incorrectly chose to use only 5 million members of the NRA in your equation instead of properly representing the real number of “gun owners” which is in the actual billions. So now you want to backpedal and mince words because I proved you wrong.
Your point was shutdown, you’ve been schooled, and you simply need to be man (or woman) enough to own up to it and move along rather than embarrass yourself any further. Now please do the right thing.
At least there is balance. Immediately after Apple made their anti-gun statement using a water pistol, within days Microsoft did the exact opposite – by changing their previous toy ray-gun emoji to a pistol.
Interestingly the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb said, “Maybe gun owners should think twice about buying any more Apple products…” But apparently consumers already do just that.
Statistical sources reveal more liberal narrow-minded people tend to buy Apple’s totalitarian line of controlled products because they need to be told what is good for them; whereas conservatives tend to purchase more open-minded collaboratively designed products based on open source code projects shared by the likes of Google’s free Android development platform or Microsoft’s free programing resources and education tools, to name a few.
Apple on the other hand limits their handpicked programmers and has always forced their overly controlling interests and political views to creep into their final products. At one point back when Steve Jobs was in charge of Apple, he was caught controlling and limiting what users were allowed to search for on their product browsers.
The most telling similarities are that much like the filthy tactics often employed by the anti-gun liberals whenever they can’t legitimately win over the people through honest means, Apple realized they were losing the portable device war against Android sales and so they began to file lawsuit after lawsuit using bogus patent infringement claims against rival companies like Samsung.
Whether Apple’s claims were true or not didn’t matter, all they cared about was that it would cost these rival companies millions in court costs and delay their new product releases. Sound familiar? Just like the liberals and their constant bogus ant-gun lawsuits, when Apple couldn’t win a fair competitive market war they had to resort to shooting dirty pool.
It is quite fascinating that our political leanings unwittingly also reflect in many of our consumer purchasing choices.
Sorry G-Man. Now you are the one making stupid accusations.
Many people purchase Apple products because the are on the cutting edge of technology and they are well designed. Your statement that conservatives tend to purchase Microsoft and Android products is actually quite the opposite of what I have observed.
Do you also draw conclusions between semi-auto vs revolver owners?
@ Guns and apples,
I accept your apology. I get that you are an obviously butt-hurt Apple owner to feel the need to become so defensive over my stated facts. So offended even that you missed the part where I made clear this was not my opinion, but based on “statistical sources”.
I suggest you practice digesting what you read before you fly off the handle – it just might lead you to do your own proper research and spare you the embarrassment from being the real culprit at making “stupid accusations”.
Wow G-Man,
I do not deny being a pretty loyal Apple products user. Again, it seems more Conservatives that I know, tend toward Apple products. That is my direct observation, not some easily skewed “statistic”.
I think Apple is totally stupid for changing the emoji. Hence, I will probably not update to the iOS when the change is implemented. I likes my guns. The snowflakes and rainbows all laud Apple’s decision. Whether the stupid decision will affect their sales or not is questionable. (This act of supreme stupidity may actually have an unexpected good consequence if their sales sag. Apple has been taking a wrong road since Job’s death.)
Product-wise: You simply cannot compare apples and lemons, really.
So we each reveal our technology bias. We both agree the emoji change is colossally stupid.
btw, I carry revolvers. I am a woman. When I go to church each week, it is not a question of AM I carrying, concealed under my long skirt. It is a question of HOW MANY am I carrying. ????????????????????
@ Guns and apples,
Thirty-three years in law enforcement (and counting), yet I am still always amazed to see how personal bias alters one’s perception of reality and leads them into unnecessary actions and pointless responses.
Case-and-point: You wrote, “So we each reveal our technology bias. We both agree the emoji change is colossally stupid.” But the reality is that at no time did I ever state either of those things. What actually occurred was that I relayed relevant facts in relation to this article’s topic matter – the statistical sources of which are numerous and easily available to anyone.
I never once injected my own personal opinion or stated one way or another as to how I personally felt about Apple’s emoji changes or my own technology preferences. Yet thereafter you allowed your personal bias – in favor of Apple products – to cloud your judgement and chose to see my un-biased facts as an affront towards your personal preferences.
From there you made unconfirmed assumptions about me simply because I was the messenger of facts which you chose to perceive as personally offensive. However, your inability to rationalize my statements as facts led to your unbridled compulsion to launch a distasteful personal attack upon the messenger, whereby you disregarded the facts and instead decided to categorize them as my own “stupid accusations”.
You don’t get to convert a fact into a discardable opinion simply because you don’t like how it makes you feel.
You can’t fix Stupid , A squirt gun shows how desperate the So/Coms are. Hang strong on 2-A. We will win in the end. Tyranny withers away in time. Again I say read your History Books. Socialism and a Communism are like Noxious weeds that have to be mowed down periodically. What we are facing is The GOP offers Free Market Capitalism and freedom of thought and actions. Hillary’s plan for America is Full bore Socialism which is in reality Pure and simple,,A Police State. Would you like to live in Communist Cuba????? How about North Korea.??? Think deeply my Friends!!!!!!!!!!
This is a game. Who really cares what the “gun” looks like. When I was a kid I could pick up a stick and pretend it was a gun. Apple can make their game controller look like anything they want to. I’ve never played their game, but if I wanted to I could pick up their stick and play the game.
The Second Amendment Foundation should wake up to THE NEW WORLD that we live in. I agree with their frustration, but I felt the same way when the “politically correct” took our innocent ‘number sign’: ‘#’ and started calling it a ‘hashtag’ with a new meaning. Apple has ALWAYS been anti-gun as is AARP as I recently found out when I asked them to add a cost replacement rider for my gun collection to my renters insurance. Apple just used O’bama’s comments as an excuse to forward THEIR agenda!
I’m not agreeing with the President pushing his ideology on we Americans who so firmly believe in the Constitution as it was written and intended, I’m just giving MY opinion.
What is surprising is, this administrations contempt for guns while they themselves have the US doing air strikes in 7 countries, have special forces in 80-90 nations doing their abductions, assassinations and drone strikes; This President being at war more days than any other president ever since the founding of America. This President promotes random shootings, black lives matter where shooting police is their constitutional right, and gives license to criminals who know it is all the NRA’s fault. While people hate Bush because he was in one war and lost 575 soldiers lives, supporters of this administration don’t seem to mind that this war monger president is in 6-7 wars, has killed over 2500 of our troops and repeatedly sends men and women back into harms way 4-10 times; making them basket cases when they come home. This president advocates assassinations and by his own words, would like to go into Iran before they start anything. The people enjoy Obama’s repeated lies and condemnation of law abiding gun owners. As smart as the high tech industry is about technology, they are extremely ignorant about crime in America, gun owners, blaming the guilty rather than excusing them, and following a treasonous leader who they think is on their side…wait until he wants Apple’s money…he enjoys swindling American businesses through extortion…I’m surprised he hasn’t hit the gun manufacturers.
We can all see the deceit behind the crook in the Whitehouse. The saddest epitaph for America is that the people themselves keep supporting him even after his 75 known lies and perjuries, his multiple wars without congressional approval, his constant blaming everyone else for his incompetence, his loyalties to terrorists and his self-indulgent entitlement mentality…Nixon and Benedict Arnold should be exonerated.
It is virtually impossible to stop doing business with the companies who serve our nation’s enemies…it would drive anyone insane trying to find honorable big businesses in our society. Almost like trying to find an honest politician…you know how you can tell when they are lying of course, it is when they open their mouth and their lips are moving…
Give to your favorite gun groups, write your representatives (although they’ll do nothing anyway) and pray diligently…this election is going to need a miracle…who knows how many of the dead, the illegals or their dogs will be casting their votes…
The PC morons at Apple can keep their squirt guns. I’ll keep my real firearms…..the ones that will keep me, my family, my friends, and any other law abiding citizens alive when confronted by a psychotic liberal.