Guns get very complicated in rpg's, especially if you're really after realism rather than an adequate game simulation.
I always thought that if skill means skill, as opposed to a simple probability of a hit, then firearm capabilities like recoil, range and rate of fire and human capabilities like coolness under fire should be considered part of the skill for the purposes of BRP. Even ammunition management in a firefight is a matter of experience rather than mathematics.
The chance of any numpty picking up a modern rifle and hitting something in the head is covered by criticals.
Coolness under fire is probably a skill, based on an aptitude for combat (POW stat? Maybe High INT as a negative since it goes against reason!) but learned through experience. You learn that if you don't keep your head over the parapet so that you can lay fire on the enemy then he will close with and kill you. This of course means that you might cop it either from an aimed round or a wild one, but the alternative is a certain death, whilst sticking your head up only offers a chance of it.
Whilst Str helps with the recoil of a rapidly firing submachinegun, the skillful use of bursts is a much more effective means of controlling it. Adherence to marksmanship principles (a learned skill) makes the recoil of even .50 cal weapons more of a painful nuisance than an impediment to hitting a target.
I always felt that you should give a weapon an optimum/maximum performance and downgrade its abilities through skill range bands. Over the top in my own opinion, but people do seem to want reality above all else.
As an observation, most of the serious soldiers I've met cared about two things - the size of the round and the reliability of the weapon. Everything else was just window dressing. As long as the weapon didn't get a stoppage, the only other question was whether the guy they hit was going to stay down or fire back. Weapons are often referred to only by their calibre - as a roleplayer I was horrified and found it incomprehensible to think that they didn't know they were using colt commando/M203, but they didn't really seem to care...
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