I'm not saying from a personal perspective, but from a physics perspective. For most guns you can pass off weapon perks as "internal sci-fi gobbledygook", but for hand cannons you really can't; they're as skeletal as a functioning gun can readily get. Its a barrel, chamber, hammer/trigger, and grip. Some of them have more mass than others, but its such a small difference that it only seems to serve cosmetic purposes. The mechanisms behind the perks would not only have hardly any armor protecting them from the elements, they'd likely make the gun very awkwardly weighted.
How do they hold more than 8 rounds at a time? You open the main chamber when you reload, and you'll either see a solid black cylinder pop out or a quick-loader preloaded with 8 rounds. But then magically the gun has 13 rounds in it. Assuming the average hand cannon is 18 inches in length, that makes the average length of the chamber ~3 inches, the width/diameter ~2.4 inches, and the circumference ~7.5 inches. Assuming the hand cannons use a caliber similar to the modest 9mm family of bullets (0.355in diameter, 1.11in circumference), it'd be able to stuff about 10 in the chamber; 12 if the walls were dangerously thin. But then that brings up the third oddity.
How are they so strong? A bullet's lethality can be observed in two main factors: Impact force and penetrating force. Impact force how effectively a bullet unloads all its potential energy into a target, while penetrating force is how well a bullet can cut through a target. Most handgun rounds have either a rounded or flattened head, giving them a massive impact force at the cost of armor penetration. The only way to offset this and give a bullet both high impact and high penetration is to give it the motherload of gunpowder in its casing. But there is no room. A 9mm does paltry damage compared to most rifle calibers, yet hand cannons do more damage per bullet than any infantry rifle. What are these tiny god-bullets, and why don't all guns use them? Recoil? The hand cannons have minimal recoil suppression yet they handle like modern guns just fine. A fully outfitted rifle would barely budge from the recoil of these bullets. If guardians wanted to fight back the Darkness, then why don't they just modify their rifles to fire hand cannon rounds and just 2-tap everything in a fraction of a second? Ammo expenses? We have floating lightbulbs/door openers that turn the flesh of the dead into ammo! Its literally an ouroboros of lead rain!
Is this a conspiracy? Is the Vanguard, Cryptarchy, and Crucible working together to hush up the secrets of these magical BB guns? Is it possible that these guns have secrets that could be shared amongst the rest of the arsenal, but aren't because of some ulterior motive? Is it because hand cannons look cool, so they have to be amazing by default? Is this why the Gunsmith gets real shifty every couple of months and asks I bring in my guns for maintenance, only for them to feel worse later?! This will not stand! This WILL NOTWFRSDJHJGTRKwe:rkgkla:
[b]Please disregard the above statements. A faulty resurrection gave the author some minor brain damage, and has been remedied. Thank you for your time.[/b]
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The simple answer here is space magic.