Mirror's Edge may have shooting, but it's not shooting game. Main character Faith is agile, but fragile and vulnerable. If she's going to leap across a huge space in buildings, she can't do it with a gun. Faith needs to put it down, first. Website Kikizo asked developer EA DICE if it considered letting players throwing the gun across the gap to use later. According to the game's producer Manuel Llines:
Not really. The key thing in the game is that... We're maybe taking another sort of leap there, and saying "you know what, she's a runner, she really has no reason to do that." Because she doesn't know what's going to happen there, and the odds are that, as she's a runner, she's going to have to do that. And it would just be gimmicky for people who shoot better... Just kick the guy in the nuts and take his gun next time there's a guy with a gun. Because at the end of the day, if you need a gun, there's always another guy with a gun. You can just snatch it.
Killer game mechanic: Kick dudes in the nuts over and over and over again. It's the simple pleasures that really matter. Mirror's Edge Interview with EA DICE [Kikizo]