So much has been made in the last few weeks of the "50+ base weapons" quote from Mr. Howard. One of the recurrent reactions seems to be "oh come on, Fallout 3 had 137 weapons/219 weapons/tons and tons of weapons." The exact number seems to vary drastically based on what criteria people choose to use when counting them all up.
I decided to see if I could cut through all the wild assertions and figure out how exactly the "50+ base weapons" deal stacks up to the previous entry. The criteria I used when counting is what I imagine the devs use when considering how many weapons the need to make; namely, "How many uniquely shaped weapons are there?" the same gun with a different texture, gun sound, etc., does not count as a unique weapon. Thus, while a plasma pistol and a plasma rifle are two unique weapons, the scoped .44 magnum and the Blackhawk are not.
With this in mind I counted sixty-six different weapons; keep in mind this INCLUDES all unique DLC weapons. This number seems pretty closely in line with the number in Fallout 4, without the insanely cool looking mod system that should add a huge amount of variety to the game.

TL;DR: Chill people. There are bound to be plenty of weapons for everyone.

It's a gaming forum. We will always find something to complain about. Complaining about video games is the only mildly productive thing some of us will ever do with our lives.

They decide to offer borderlands amount of choices but we're [censored]ing.

I'm personally sick of: "Do you think ripper, plasma, this armor, this character will return?"

-Enclave is present? YES = Enclave armor will return

-Brotherhood is present? YES = Laser weapons will return

-Chance (whoever the hell he was) is present? YES = Chance's Knife will return.

On the otherhand it seems NO ONE is interested in seeing Cazadors, Floaters and Wanamingos to return. Sure they gave us problems but at least they added variety to the game.
Meh. Who am I complaining here? People have been complaining ABOUT VARIETY since day 1...

Even if people were going to get what they wanted, people would still find something to complain about.

That's the sad thing about gaming communities of today. We all want to be Angry Reviewers.

If the amount of guns in the vanilla game fails to appease people all they have to do is wait for the mods to roll out.

so far from the images i've seen, its vastly surpassed my expectations, i wanted to see alot more homemade weapon and armor types in the new fallout. I'm glad they went all out.

along side that, i do want alot of historically accurate weapons as well. desert eagle, mp5, 1911 handguns, 7.62 rifles,etc

hopefully alot of those are unique weapons with customization, but i'm not so worried about it since we'll get hundreds of weapon mods, Millenia is the god of weapons and i'm sure he'll be happy to oblige us with as many as he can make.

I really hope they took a long hard look at the ammo as well. having unique weapons fire rare bullets would be awesome. the CalibrX mods in fallout are a must have in general. I hate the vague names they gave the weapons and ammo. I hope they saw how important those mods were.

i'd rather want to be a happy player actually

Sometimes beyond angry. Some of those nut cases take it waaay too far.

It's what gamers do on gaming forums. Complain and complain about other people complaining.

If I remember when I counted it was 46 weapons from the base game. Sooo... Improvement! I'd say New Vegas had more but I'm starting to think they don't give two [censored] what New Vegas had (In a very jealous way as well)