Virtual people carrying costly weapons (8)
I believe the answer is:
sidearms
'weapons' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'virtual people carrying costly' is the wordplay.
'virtual people' becomes 'sims' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'carrying' is an insertion indicator.
'costly' becomes 'dear' (synonyms).
'sims' going around 'dear' is 'SIDEARMS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for sidearms that I've seen before include "weapons" , "We could kill" .)