he lost his hunting rifle and NO MATTER WHAT will not use it. he used a police baton until i gave him a displacer glove. i evuntually fired him, for veronica cuz shes awsome and better at melee. but why is boone without his rifle?

Try giving him .308 ammo.

This happened to me too the first time I played through. If he switches to melee, most of the time you can switch him manually to melee then ranged again, but if you switch to ranged and it doesn't say "Boone's hunting rifle" in the bottom, chances are it was shot out of his hand and he never picked it up. At least that is what I am assuming happened when he lost his gun in my game.

Sometimes if you take companions with you into casinos, the greeter will take their weapons, and it will be put into your inventory when you leave. Not theirs, it's an unfortunate bug.

I had the casino thing happen to Boone once. I checked his inventory and everything and he just wouldn't pull out his rifle. The moment I left the strip and got into some combat I heard the familiar sound of his hunting rifle splitting someone's head. Seemed like it disappeared but eventually found it's way back.