No dispute here. In particular the South didn’t have a lot of manufacturing capability, and had to beg and buy guns. I’m sure they used anything that was available.
The Union Army (especially the STATE & VOLUNTEER units) used whatever arms that they could beg, borrow, buy or pick-up off the battlefields.
FYI, when a 17YO cousin from (what is now) Miller County Arkansas wanted to join the one of the AR volunteer units/CSA, he was told to ARRIVE with a functional rifle or musket or TO STAY HOME.
His father bought him a Brown Bess (in good shape) & off “Ramey” went to Ft. Smith to be a Partisan Ranger.
(About 7 months later, he wrote a letter home that said that Ramey had “picked up” an a “near new” Harper’s Ferry rifled musket “off the field” & that he had given the Bess to a new recruit, who had no firearm.)
Ramey’s letters home are preserved/treasured by the AR part of our extended family, up there.
Note: Another of his letters stated that he was “pleased to have gotten” a new pair of boots from a Union SGT’s body.
(Soldiers of both armies routinely took equipment, good-quality boots & uniform items from “those who no longer needed them. Overcoats were considered a “PRIZE” by 1963.)
Yours, TMN78247