Alright, first off, unless its something like brotherhood armor or a minigun, repairing it is not really worth the time, when you can either craft a bunch of bullets and by a new SMG to use, 10mm SMGs can be pretty cheap if you check through them for the really cheap ones. also If its over 80% det you might as well sell it and let lowbies buy it as a throw away gun, or use it to arm your leveling crafters or keep as a throw away gun for yourself.
Second as for alts, you really don't need to many characters to support one character, heck you can get by without any alts as long as you don't plan to get in to huge fights where everyone has brotherhood armor.
And even than, you can get by with just 3 characters, make a big gunner with BG/DOC/FA tagged for medic/combat duty, a big gun 3/ small gun 1 crafter for lighter PvP and PvE. and a armor maker that could double as a full time taxi if you boost up outdoors with extra points. and than you use him for that. and boom, you have brotherhood armor, medic stuff and drugs if you want to have your Big gunner as a drugie, plus a crafter for you to do most of your stuff with, who can make small guns to protect himself and make big gun stuff as well, the only character you won't use as much is your armor/taxi guy, but you're still getting two uses out of him, and are still going to be wearing brotherhood armor and carrrying miniguns around, and lets face it, if you're not in a gang you shouldn't try to kill every rogues member all at once anyway.
Third, the basic idea i had in mind, is that on many other games moving items from character to character is thought of as cheating, and having characters that could supplie themselves, or trading with others was required. and while i don't think forcing players to do things, but as i've said before, this suggestion is also meant to be food for thought, so if anyone has a suggestion about what would make single use alts less useful a reply with those ideas might be welcomed by the devs who like to hear from the fanbase at large.
cheers for now.
-Ulrek-