It was really stupid when various digital platforms decided to change their gun emojis for a water pistol.

They did it because guns are only permissible to be considered, thought about, or talked about in particular contexts. More specifically, you're either in the film or television industry or you're talking about banning them. Anything beyond that is unacceptable.

So, they turned the gun emoji into a water pistol.

Literally nothing changed as a result, either. The world didn't get safer, mass shootings didn't stop, we didn't benefit from the change in the least little bit. Shocking, I know.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find out that people are outraged over Elon Musk bringing it back on X, formerly Twitter.

While the update might seem like a game for Musk, the simple act of changing the style of the emoji can have real-world impact. Most platforms and providers, including Twitter, swapped the realistic pistol emoji for a water gun or cartoonish space laser in the mid 2010s. The Unicode Consortium, which approves new emoji, also changed its official designation of the item to a “water pistol” around the same time.

The changes came after highly-publicized criticism of the emoji’s depiction, amid rising gun violence in the United States that saw gun-related deaths begin to tick upwards after almost 15 years of no growth.

“In 2016, after a lot of external pressure from media outlets and social media users, Apple decided to change their rendering of the pistol emoji to a child’s water pistol,” says Broni. “I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that the United States has a very interesting relationship with firearms. Apple’s change of this design was a response to a number of court cases that were beginning to emerge, where the gun emoji was being looked at as whether it constituted a threat.” And because of the ubiquity of the iPhone, where Apple led, others followed.

But X’s conscious shift away from the new standard changes things—and fragments what had been a largely harmonious and homogenous approach by tech companies in recent years. “People use emojis as a community tool,” says Broni. “So the aesthetics, the features, the attributes of that design, have to be coherent for them to have proper utility as a community tool.”

Again, the emoji change accomplished nothing. Why? Well, for starters, it's not a real gun.

The "real" pistol emoji didn't have any impact on violence in this country. People aren't driven to murder others because of depictions of cartoonish guns embedded in or underneath posts. That's something that exists in their hearts and souls, which is where the fight for such things actually should be taking place. Only it's not, because we're arguing about whether or not a water pistol emoji makes everything better.

It's insane.

Musk is rattling cages here, but they're cages that someone should have had the cajones to rattle years ago. We need to challenge this idea that depictions of guns are somehow problematic.

They're not.

What the water pistol emoji did was take one more step in stigmatizing guns and gun ownership, potentially driving them out of the public's eye in such a way that they feel alien to the average person. When stuff like that feels alien, people don't feel inclined to defend it.

Musk, by putting it back on X, if nowhere else, is making a stand that I'm not sure he meant to make. He's saying that guns are part of the fabric of our nation, and if a gun emoji is warranted, a water pistol is a stupid and ridiculous alternative.

The initial change was idiotic. Nothing is better for it. Instead, the water pistol is, at most, used as a euphemism for a gun when a gun emoji is needed, but in most cases, it's just a stupid addition that contributed nothing.

So, there's no reason for it to stay.

Maybe it's time the rest of us turn up the heat on other tech companies to follow Musk's lead.