I would not suggest taking out weapons, no matter how little the differentiate from each other. It's like in real life, a pistol is a pistol, yet there are hundreds, if not thousands of models of it. We pretend to be part of a living universe, it would not make sense to only have three pistol models, that's it. I'd say we need more different weapon models, not less.
Rebalancing shrapnel and health sounds good, though.