Re: Best gun/ammo for home defense with least over-penetrati
You pretty much got it in one: anything which will tear a hole in a bad guy will tear holes through the cardboard box in which you live.
Your best bet is to get something fairly marginal, power-wise, and make it a hollowpoint so that what energy it does have, it loses pretty quickly after impact with anything substantial.
A .357 Magnum in any plausible load will tear a big, deep hole unless you're using some kind of frangible round, and even then it's not fooling around. Out of a 4 inch barrel its typical loads are easily supersonic. Unimpeded, it takes a bit of distance before those rounds enter the transonic zone, and the 158 grain classic .357 Magnum is obviously heavier than your typical 110 grain 9mm Luger round.
However, I think that you're going about this the wrong way.
Instead of worrying about the bullets which miss (after all, your opposition might be spraying bullets like a rage hose) take good care to ensure that your bullets go where you want them. A .380 is deadly if shot accurately. A .500 S&W is just loud when it misses.
So my recommendation is: get a firearm in a calibre which is cheap and comfortable to shoot, while being adequately powerful for bad guys. Then buy several thousand rounds, find a good training course, and learn to put holes in things you don't like, reliably, under stress.
I'd rather have a Hi-point .45 and 4,000 rounds of ammunition than a Kimber and 50 rounds. I'd never shoot the Kimber enough to get skills.
You say you like a revolver. Turns out, so do I. My daily carry on the farm is a Ruger GP100 with a six inch barrel. I reload, which cuts the cost of regular shooting. You should probably reload, on the grounds that if you're not reloading enough to save you money on ammunition, you're probably not shooting enough to really get skilled. I can report that the Ruger will tear a hole through a big varmint which I can put a walking stick through. You don't want to stick the walking stick through the bad guy - the police might request explanations - but poking the hole through him when he's in front of you and your baby's behind will probably fly in most states. But if you get a revolver, get a couple of speedloaders and practice using them too.
Hope that gives you some food for thought.
You pretty much got it in one: anything which will tear a hole in a bad guy will tear holes through the cardboard box in which you live.
Your best bet is to get something fairly marginal, power-wise, and make it a hollowpoint so that what energy it does have, it loses pretty quickly after impact with anything substantial.
A .357 Magnum in any plausible load will tear a big, deep hole unless you're using some kind of frangible round, and even then it's not fooling around. Out of a 4 inch barrel its typical loads are easily supersonic. Unimpeded, it takes a bit of distance before those rounds enter the transonic zone, and the 158 grain classic .357 Magnum is obviously heavier than your typical 110 grain 9mm Luger round.
However, I think that you're going about this the wrong way.
Instead of worrying about the bullets which miss (after all, your opposition might be spraying bullets like a rage hose) take good care to ensure that your bullets go where you want them. A .380 is deadly if shot accurately. A .500 S&W is just loud when it misses.
So my recommendation is: get a firearm in a calibre which is cheap and comfortable to shoot, while being adequately powerful for bad guys. Then buy several thousand rounds, find a good training course, and learn to put holes in things you don't like, reliably, under stress.
I'd rather have a Hi-point .45 and 4,000 rounds of ammunition than a Kimber and 50 rounds. I'd never shoot the Kimber enough to get skills.
You say you like a revolver. Turns out, so do I. My daily carry on the farm is a Ruger GP100 with a six inch barrel. I reload, which cuts the cost of regular shooting. You should probably reload, on the grounds that if you're not reloading enough to save you money on ammunition, you're probably not shooting enough to really get skilled. I can report that the Ruger will tear a hole through a big varmint which I can put a walking stick through. You don't want to stick the walking stick through the bad guy - the police might request explanations - but poking the hole through him when he's in front of you and your baby's behind will probably fly in most states. But if you get a revolver, get a couple of speedloaders and practice using them too.
Hope that gives you some food for thought.