I definetly like the idea of custom weapons, however the one down side is that you make all gangs very similar, maybe we could go down the route of giving gangs a more unique weapon specific to their backstory rather than all the same weapon with a different color.
Just some random examples that jump to mind:
Like a baseball bat for Grove and a /chinese chefs knife for triads and of course some sort of holy water spray for the apostles.
Obviously we would have to make sure it is fair damage-wise, but you get the point. A bit more uniqueness rather than a bunch of gangs where a color is the only difference.
It is something that will be discussed within the development team pretty soon, along with the gang clothing as well.