Billionaire Elon Musk today made a cryptic gun emoji post on his social media platform X, shortly after President Joe Biden spoke on the rising gun violence in the US.
As Biden spoke, Musk, who officially endorsed Trump last month, dropped an emoji-filled post on X, without elaborating further. The emojis he used were of a gun and a man dancing.
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2024
“The gun emoji being nerfed in 2016 marked the ascendance of woke mind virus,” he said in another post.
In the past, he has described the “woke mind virus” as a threat to “modern civilisation”.
Elon Musk’s post comes weeks after X, formerly Twitter, replaced the “water pistol” emoji – which was depicted as a colorful child’s toy – with an emoji depicting an actual gun.
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Apple first changed its gun emoji from a realistic-looking revolver into a water pistol in 2016 following a succession of US shootings. Samsung, WhatsApp, and Google then also switched to a water pistol emoji in 2018. Twitter, under former boss Jack Dorsey, also switched to a water pistol in 2018.
Earlier in the day, Biden gave a farewell speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and said that more children are killed in America by a gunshot than anywhere else.
“That’s why Kamala (Harris) and I are proud to have passed major gun legislation… Now it’s time to ban assault weapons,” Biden told the gathering, less than a month after dropping out of the White House race against Donald Trump and passing the torch to his vice president.
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a website that tracks shootings across the US, more than 10,000 people have so far died this year from “wilful malicious or accidental shootings”.
At least 19 people have so far been killed this year in 352 mass shootings in the US. In 2023, 40 people were killed in 656 mass shootings, according to the GVA.
More than 900 children 17 years old and younger, including 154 under the age of 11, have been killed in shootings this year, according to the GVA.
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