In practice the big companies are more in charge. Apple changed the pistol to a water gun (mentioned in the article and at [0]), and now all the big emoji sets from Google/MS/FB/Twtr/etc. also have a water gun instead of a pistol.
Apple also succeeded at preventing the rifle emoji and the Modern Pentathlon emoji (which contained a rifle) from being included, apparently with support from MS.
[0]: https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/ [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/20/apple-rif...
It's pretty stupid how every other big tech company follows every single bad decision that Apple makes. Removing 3.5mm jack, removing pistol emoji, notches in screens, and now getting rid of chargers.
I personally do everything I can to boycott Unicode emoji. Some platforms like Slack/Discord allow for adding your own emoji which is nice. Language should not be controlled by a single entity.