Probably for gameplay balancing reasons, although maybe not a very good one. If the pistols were weak compared to all the other bigger calibers, players wouldn't use them, so they made them like miniature rail guns, but now they are too powerful and you wouldn't use an assault rifle for anything, so they made them slow, et voilà ! Good enough, we have to work on Panam's butt polygons now.
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There's at least one mod to address this if you play on pc, called "Simply Improved Pistols"
I'm not at my computer at the moment but iirc there's a pistol called "Dying light/night" that has a fast firing rate
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