Thanks a lot! Yeah we wanted the focus to be on the guns personality. Originally there was way more dialog planned with your gun, your rivals as well as their guns too.
The main reason reload was on shift was that we had other "nozzles" planned such as a sniper, where you would need right-click to aim. I had everything in the engine already, but level-design was so last-minute that I couldn't place them in a way that made sense.
If it ruined your chance to finish it, the reload bug is fixed by going all the way back to the main menu and loading again.