Way to make Side shooter sprite with Gun under Right Arm?

Hi Guys,

So i am working on a Side Shooting Game and had a good weapon select system in place (When my character was a Yellow Box :D

Now ive started to create him and my game has it so pressing 1 or 2 changes the weapons (Deletes the weapon when swapping and creates the new one)

So now i have to worry about the Sprite being a person with Arms, i cant create guns under the Right Arm anymore, It goes over top of the sprite using that system.

So should i possibly create the Right Arm as a seperate sprite and pin it to my player sprite always on top and use the same system, Or create animations for every single gun and do it that way, So i can layer all the guns in my graphics program?

Hopefully this makes sense...would love to know any Side Shooter Tips you have :)

Thanks

If that is the system you're going for then generally the character animations would suit all weapons so you only have to use one animation and then you can replace the gun sprite which is placed on top.