How does the gold multiplier on some weapons effect damage?

Question

On some weapons the weapon damage stat includes a gold "x[Number] " multiplier. For example, this one:

What does this multiplier mean and how does it effect damage output? Does it only apply to shotguns, or is it possible on other weapon types?

Answer 1

The first number is the base damage of each bullet and second number (gold one) is the amount of bullets fired each time you take a shot.

This multiplier can apply to all weapons in the game.

How it applies to shotguns:

Each bullet (shell) fired from a shotgun splits into multiple pellets.
The first number is the base damage of each pellet and the second number is amount of pellets fired per shot.

How it applies to other guns:

First number is the base damage of a bullet and second number shows you how many bullets you fire with each shot. Even though they fire multiple bullets with each shot they only consume 1 ammo per shot.

It's also worth mentioning that weapons with damage (bullet) multipliers other then shotguns are not very common (they are somewhat rare).

Answer 2

It means multiple bullets come out of one shot. Like buckshot. There is a spread; the spread value is different for each weapon and is not shown anywhere in the inteface/game.

So in this case, if you were point blank, you would have 10 bullets doing 22 damage = 220 damage (plus all the other modifiers). But if you were far away, maybe only 2 of those will hit for 2x22=44.