Weapon condition
Tape around the grip, a sticker on the body and scuffing on the slide. Guns in this series have never looked used before.
Weapons in Grand Theft Auto have always arrived immaculate. Whatever you picked up looked like it had come out of the box that morning, however long it had been rattling around the back of a stolen sedan.
The check cashing screenshot breaks the pattern. The pistol in Lucia's hand has tape wrapped around the grip, a sticker stuck to the body and visible scuffing across the slide. It reads as the weapon of somebody early in a career rather than somebody being supplied.
Why it would matter
If condition is a tracked value rather than a one-off piece of art, a gun becomes something you maintain, replace or get rid of. That sits directly alongside the evidence system, where your weapon is one of the things the police are matching against you. Dumping a weapon after a job stops being flavour and becomes a decision with a price attached, because the thing you are throwing in the water is the thing you have been carrying since the start.
A distinctive weapon is also easier to match than a generic one. Tape and a sticker are exactly the details a witness describes.
The honest position
Rockstar has said nothing about weapon wear. Not a word. Everything above is an inference from a single screenshot, and it is entirely possible that the tape is character work for Lucia specifically and nothing more.
It is worth noting anyway, because Rockstar's art department does not put tape on a grip by accident, and because the studio has form here. Red Dead Redemption 2 tracked weapon degradation and required cleaning, to the visible irritation of a large part of its audience. The idea is not new to the company.
Related: the weapon wheel, the wanted system.