Thank you to everyone who participated for all the varied feedback!
I had not yet considered suggestions like the spiked brass knuckles or how it would affect gun stock whacking smacking (however you like to call it).
My takeaway is that we should go for the best of both worlds, incorporating all of these suggestions.
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Brass knuckles and spiked brass knuckles will be one-handed weapons, so equipping them does not affect gun melee damage.
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Weighted gloves or studded gloves will boost melee damage across the board, for punching, knuckles, melee, and gun melee. This may have some negative tradeoff, and contends against other types of gloves like speed reloading gloves or winter warm gloves.
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Weighted gun stocks ideal for melee may have negative tradeoffs.
I would also like to address the tertiary weapon slot suggestions. That completely makes sense with how equipment slots worked in Unturned, and how they appear to work in Unturned II, however I intend to revise this in the future. In 3 the purpose of primary and secondary were to provide a visual indicator to other players of whether that player had weapons or not. They might have weapons in their backpack, but the only quickly accessible weapons were visible at a glance. Otherwise the slots function similarly to hotkeyed items which were added later. You do not necessarily have your primary or secondary equipped, you could have an item from your bag equipped instead. In 4 those widgets are only ever the actively equipped items. Each clothing item will display which weapons may be contained as holstered items to solve the visual indicator of weaponry. Item quick access will then be handled separately with bindable hotkeys and/or a quick select wheel, and whatever else is suggested for quick access.
This thread has been interesting and I will keep the format in mind for future questions. 