Action RPG Inventory System

I’m having trouble with this as well;
I have pistol, rifle and sword weapons so i need to detect which *type *the weapon is to update my animations accordingly.
so far to try to get this working I have started with just getting the rifle to work - I added new equipment type (rifle), updated the existing assault rifle item to use this new type, and in my inventory manager Ive added new byte variable (rifle) thinking i would compare
the equipped item in the main hand slot to this variable:

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I moved the variable to local and still nothing, I’m assuming im doing a lot incorrectly…

Anyone who makes a simple tutorial on how to get different weapon types (when equipped in the main hand slot) to talk to the anim bp gets a real life sized hug from something pleasant of your choice