From Scott Butler
Thoughts: As noted by Simon Bird, I think there is more going on with the weapons than meets the eye. His descriptions – specifically, Ash taking Murphy’s gun, reminded me eerily of playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (based very loosely on the Russian movie Stalker), where I’d check my own gun’s state (durability, range, rate of fire, damage) in the inventory screen, then comparing that to a newly-acquired weapon, and discarding the inferior of the two. Just looking at a gun in the game or knowing its real-world performance is useless, you have to check the underlying statistics before picking a replacement firearm. I think this is what happened here: Murphy’s gun may not have any truly special properties, but it had better statistics than the one she was given.
Also his note about pistols as status symbols or powerups: I’d like to pose a counter-example. Ash is using a sniper rifle, unwieldy at close range. Thus, she needs a backup weapon for when the enemy is in her face. None of the other characters are shown wielding their pistols, possibly because either:
A) They didn’t need to draw them, having assault rifles or SMGs, which would be fine for the close-up combat we see most of the time in Avalon; or
B) They simply didn’t have one, trusting their primary weapon to do all the talking. Someone with such a specialized weapon as a sniper rifle, though, would require some other weapon to compensate for its weaknesses (low rate of fire, not designed to be fired without using a scope).
I think Bishop gave Ash his gun simply because she expended bullets from her own pistol (and had no other gun), and Oshii wanted his heroine to use his favorite weapon.
Anyway, other points, which I don’t think were raised:
1) During the starting scene, we see Ash’s sniper rifle (listed as SDV in her gear list). We also see her equipment list – note that it only contains her SDV and pistol. However, later in the movie when they fight the Citadel, you’ll notice that her rifle has a much larger scope. When she shoots the soldiers in the back in the Citadel fight (Right after Stunner says “Bishop’s throwing away his front line men”), you also see the scope’s crosshair is different from when she shoots the cockpit of the bomber helicopter at the start, so this change is intentional and not a prop mix-up on the set. She somehow gets the scope between Ruins C66, and Flak Tower22 (since you can see the edge of the bigger scope on her rifle just at the start of this scene). This begs the question: Where did she get the new scope from?
Unfortunately I have no answer, so on the the second observation:
2) When the bishop (“noname”) destroys the helicopter and Ash looks up his stats, it has his gear listed (Only an M1910, which I assume is Mauser 1910, but that pistol doesn’t look like the gun he has, which is a Mauser C96). I assume that someone could look up such info on Ash. This leads to the following question: Why do the fake nine sisters try and sell info on her gear? Anyone could look it up on the terminal, unless there is more to the gear list (and her gear) than meets the eye. My observation above seems to confirm this: no scopes, laser sights, night vision goggles, ammunition or other miscellaneous equipment is listed under “gear” in the player profiles, so I assume this kind of thing is what the fake nine sisters really wanted.