The change came after advocacy group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence called for Apple to #disarmtheiphone.
In June, Apple also spoke up in a Unicode meeting against a proposed rifle emoji.
Microsoft also spoke out against a rifle emoji, a Unicode member told BuzzFeed at the time. Since last year, Microsoft's Windows 10 has displayed the pistol emoji as a toy gun.
On Twitter, people were kind of 🙄 about the change.