It's on purpose. (Destiny)

by narcogen , Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, May 19, 2016, 23:50 (3203 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

I'm going to come off as a bit overly negative here, but I truly believe what I say. The simple answer to your question, IMO, is that Bungie didn't put much though into it. Like many of the peripheral systems in Destiny, the gunsmith is nothing more than yet another repetitive activity to keep us grinding yet another rep meter in the hopes of yet more RNG-based rewards.

I bet there was a small amount of conversation within Bungie at some point where a couple designers said "we don't want to make the Gunsmith weapons OP, right?" "no, just make them all crappy to be safe".

I'd have thought they were made crappy on purpose. It is supposed to get you to go into usual activities with a gun that is much worse than you'd usually have, and that has no interesting perks whatsoever, to force you to compensate by just being better at the basic gameplay loop. When your gun refunds missed shots, chains lightning damage, gives you bonus ammo, and all manner of other crazy things, it means you don't necessarily have to be 100% on the ball with the basics of dodging and shooting. The crappy gunsmith guns don't do that, have low light levels and bad stats. In return for making your ordinary activities more difficult, it rewards you with reputation that allows you to order more guns.

On balance I think you're expecting too much at this point to see the in-game reasons for things match the design parameters. They pretty much don't anywhere else, why would it apply to the gunsmith?