Hey haha, thank you! You are right about the pistol; it is an accessibility issue I hadn't considered before. And my thought process about constraining the guns to individual levels was to encourage more meaningful decisions when equipping loadouts, and to shake up the gameplay from level to level with the different gun combinations, adding challenge. Though I will say that the guns could have had more interesting attributes that set them further apart to add more depth to that.
I appreciate the feedback!