TDP gun animation

I know that perhaps the question has been exhausted to nausea, but I see that there are too many threads asking the same thing, and most of them got several different replies and workabouts to cope with. The question is: how to animate a gun cycle for a third person character?
My idea was: 1) import the main RIGGED fbx character (either main char to be controlled or ai minion whatever) 1a) import firing animations 2) import a gun (animated in some app? with bullets in it?) 2a) attach it to the chars holster 3) ???