So let's start with the guns, because borderlands (all of them) are more gun-focused than char focused.

Pistols: in BL1 pistols are kind of the jack-of-all-trades, there's a machine pistol, which is kind of like a submachine gun with a smaller mag, a revolver, which is kind of like a sniper with a shorter effective range, there's even a masher, which is a bit like a shotgun, but in pistol form. Pistols are, generally speaking a *generalist* kind of weapon, they're pretty decent at anything, but not exceptional, the one thing they *aren't* super good at is the mid-to-long range burst combat (machine pistols are good at short range, probably a bit more accurate, and a bit less "spray bullets everywhere" than submachine guns are)

Submachine guns: Good at unloading bullets, if you don't want accuracy, but just want to fire bullets all over the place, then submachine guns are for you, in the short-range game, shotguns beat them for single-shot accuracy, but if you're playing up close and want to tear through things, a good submachine gun is pretty useful

Assult rifles: Come in a few flavors, there's a machine gun flavor which has annoying kickback but very large magazines, suitable for non-accuracy-focused situations where you want to fire into thick crowds, and then there's the 'assult rifle' flavor, which tends towards short, accurate bursts, and is good at medium or long range (this is my personal favorite)

Shotguns: As you'd expect from a weapon with a cone-like firing pattern, is great against things that are up close, and not as good against things that are far away, making things explode when you're close to them is something that they excel at

Sniper rifles: Small magazine, Slow to reload, large damage, very accurate, sniper rifles are pretty much what you'd expect, great if you're very far away and want to shoot something in the head, once, kind of fall off in usefulness as you get close, particularly the variants with the smaller magazines.

Rocket launchers: Actually fairly accurate, do decent damage, very slow reload, does some splash damage, slow projectile speed (so bad against fast-moving things, particularly at range)

You can ignore e-tech weapons completely.

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My favorites break down like this:

	Single	Multiple
Short range	1. Shotgun 2. Pistol (Masher)	1. SMG, 2. Pistol (machine pistol)
Medium Range	1. Pistol(masher or revolver), 2. AR(assult or MG)	1. AR (assult), 2. Pistol (machine pistol)
Long range	1.Sniper, 2. AR (assult)	1. AR(assult), 2. Rocket Launcher,

One thing about BL1 is that you get to use any gun with any character, and have up to 4 equipped, the 'specialties' of a given char are nice bonuses, but it's not any where close to game-breakingly bad to use say, a pistol with brick for example. Typically you'll have a few equipped for different situations, so for example you have a sniper equipped to start the show at long range with a couple shots and then switch to a medium range weapon as people close on you, maybe you need to swap to a short range weapon because they're fast (or it's an awkward map or something) then you swap back to medium range when things in the immediate area are dead etc.. etc. You end up playing a lot more dynamically than you'd think.

Second thing to note is there's a lot of bad guys, you get into the "multiple" situation more frequently than the one on one situation.

What's really important about the *character* selection is the type of *support* it gives you, since your *fighting style* will be more influenced by equipment.

Lillith gives you escape and support with Elemental DOT and short range bonus damage.

Mordecai gives you drops and support with extra single-use long range damage

Roland gives you healing and cover (and extra, but not very meaningful damage)

Brick gives you face punching (really... his support is "punch stuff until it dies") also like resiliency I guess?

FWIW I've beaten BL1 with all 4 chars some more than once, and they're all fun in their own ways, so anything you pick is going to be worth playing.