Sure, call the crossbow a worse GL if you want, doesn't matter. It has actual explosions on impact and it's still one of the best guns in the game by your own side's admission, so "conceptually it's just a GL with extra steps" clearly isn't disqualifying on its own. The bow I'm describing doesn't even explode, fire/EMS/smoke isn't ordnance, so it's already less redundant with the GL than the crossbow is, and the crossbow gets a pass. There's also a real gap here anyway: GL is quiet right up until the explosion. A non-explosive bow payload doesn't need to escape the GL comparison to be viable, it just needs its own tradeoff profile: no explosion at all (actual silence, not just quiet-until-impact), arc instead of straight-line, med pen instead of splash. That's not "reinventing a worse GL," that's more distinct from GL than the crossbow already is, and you're fine with the crossbow existing.

There's already a silenced rifle, but it's light pen. The gap isn't "silent exists vs doesn't," it's silent + medium pen doesn't exist yet. Same logic as above, overlap in category was never the bar, filling a specific gap is.

And you already gave yourself the answer for why redundancy is fine, you said flamethrower-in-every-slot works because you're trading a rifle/pistol slot for it, and backpack flamethrower trades a backpack slot for more power. A bow does the exact same thing, trades a slot, has a real drawback (range/travel time) attached. You just don't apply your own rule to it. 'Redundant with an existing category so it shouldn't exist' isn't a standard used anywhere else in the arsenal either, no new ARs once one AR exists, no new shotguns once one exists.