Versatile weapon rig?

Retronamic

I'm working on the animation of few weapons and i'm looking for a technique that allows me to use the same animation for different weapon models. The weapons are UT99-ish: no player arms, just the weapon model. Most of them have the very same animation for firing, moving, etc. Just a few exceptions (like the minigun) are different.

How can i rig the weapons so that i can write a single animation for most of them? Like, firing, moving, etc.