I understand your point but to say that needing different skills for, (for example) different pistols is silly, is something I disagree with.
This is the place where you need to decide just how far you want to go with game versus reality. For example, the difference between revolvers and semi-auto pistols is like the difference between automatic and manual transmissions for vehicles.
That's the most obvious difference but there's also significant differences between hammer fired semi-autos to striker-fired semi-autos that require a different level of training and that's even before we get into the differences between traditional frame mounted safeties such as the Browning Hi-Power compared to the trigger safeties of say Glock pistols. They all require another level of training for effective handling.
But do you want to add that extra layer of complexity to a game? Generally I would say no but I do believe there is a good argument to say yes. For this reason I don't disagree with the idea of needing different skills for different firearms but I also see that at some point, you need to factor in how your players are going to deal with that level of granularity and make compensations for that. Having said that, I still maintain that needing different skills for different pistols (for example) is probably more than needed but it is not "silly" per se.
Personally, I would have liked to have made the Players have skills for each individual weapon because for example, (and I have used both), there is a big difference between the handling of the L1A1 compared to the M16A1. We are not talking simply about how they perform but the significant difference between strip/clean/assemble of the two rifles and other things such as the fact that the M16 family does not go to "Safe" unless it has been cocked first (unlike most other military rifles). I realize that my desire for realism does not mesh well with the playability of the game so I didn't try to enforce that onto the players but the fact remains, just because you know how to effectively use one rifle, does not mean you know how to effectively use a different rifle.
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