PS5 solo. Remove a weapon from an enemy and leave them roaming the world. Next time you meet (after game restart probably) they won’t have a destroyed weapon visually, but it can still fire at you.
Probably very old bug as I vaguely remember this happend to tickpods on harvesters after rivals addition back then
Idk if it’s intended, but when a rival levels up, it may restore health, armor and components (which a weapon is).
Maybe that’s what happened to you?
Just sad that the weapon model didn’t restore.
Otherwise you could simply disarm all new lvl1 rivals and level them up to lvl4 to have a greater chance for good loot and then kill them much easier.
Either way, there seems to be a bug.