I want to start sniping people with a Mortar now.

EDIT: Actually, did something similar in a demo game where the group had to protect a site from attack. They stood around as a Physical Adept used a Grenade Launcher as a Ghetto Mortar, with a Watcher Spirit spotting. Them scatter rules are a major bite in the hoop! They only actually started doing things when the guard shack blew up and they had University School Nerd and JoyGrrl guts splattered all over them.

Well, it seems to me that when people think about snipers they primarily have a concept of a combatant capable of engaging his opponents at extreme ranges, whereas what you've described fits more into the more common "street sam" archetype. Actually, sammies do have a similar problem of being rarely needed in "serious" games, since starting a major fight is often a good way into a TPK (and thus a sammy is mostly used to cover others' frag-ups), but for one-trick pony snipers its several orders of magnitude more relevant.

Haha, too bad you can't hit a barn door with heavy weapons, right? :ь

That guy weilding the shotgun can probably use a rifle just as effectively. Specialisation will be the only differentiator. And really, those two dice don't matter all that much. Especially for proper sniping, which tends to exclude defense.
That said, you might as well use the sniper rifle in CQB. Not as if there's any drawback to it anyway. Get melee hardening, and ask your GM as if you can count it as having Reach 1 as well for bonus cheese.