This is interesting, from all the various viewpoints.

I grew up shooting rifles (dad did not like handguns at all) and was good enough to get sharpshooter rifle and expert handgun ratings in Coast Guard Boot camp. I support peoples right to own firearms, with reasonable (to me) restrictions....like there is no reason to own an full on machine gun or assault rifle (though having shot m16 on auto and 50 caliber machine guns, I totally understand the rock and roll fun element of shooting them).

I believe that the effectiveness of handguns as effective self defense tools is overrated and may give a false sense of security.

Stopping power is one aspect, many here have talked about .380....but even with a hollow point there is not a lot of stopping power there. From what I remember hard core handgun self defence advocates push for something more like a .45. Certainly the concept that single shot will stop a person is not allways accurate (and if the person is on meth or similar look out) and recent new reports indicate the the .223/5.56 mm rifle used by our military does not have enough stopping power for urban warfare as experience in Iraq.

There is also the situational aspect....... many shooters who can shoot accurately in a range situation cannot shoot at the same degree of accuracy in a moving, stress situation.

But this is opinion. There are number of Law Enforcement officers on the forum and as they are the most likely to have the best training and seen the most reality, it would be really interesting to get their input based on experience. How often are civilians succesful in handgun selfdefence? How often are the results negative for the civilians? How often, when police have to resort to weapon use are there misses? How often does stopping require multiple shots?

I know this is not totally on topic, but all in all this has been an amazingly civil discussion considering subject matter, and thought the Law enforcement perspective would add value