One consideration in some houses and communities is IF you want wall penetration.
Don't much care here if it over penetrates,never had kids, closest house is 300 yards or more....across the road.
But RE the 9mm carbines... a buddy has one, I was not impressed that much with the idea, but after killing a lot of varmints with it, I'm actually impressed what a 9mm 124 bullet does to yotes/coons/possums/dillos etc... even gar and carp.
I"m not saying its good for 2 legged but its done WAY better than I expected.
RE pistol better than rifle, well flipping duh, I didn't think anyone would need to say that, but then again pistols kill fine, it seems to just take longer to die, so the DRT kind of thing isn't often happening with one except CNS... Hell from stuff I've seen video wise you may not even know if you are hitting someone.
House wise... we have a shotgun by the bed, along with a 9mm glock, and sometimes an M4 type clone or AR of some type. Likely I"d grab the handgun out of instinct in the house, backed by the shotgun, and if I have to go outside, grab the AR. But in reality if I had to pick one of three, the AR would get the nod.
RE some comments about the 300/221 and 194 lehighs, they work REALLY well on deer and pigs.. but again getting an DRT isn't happening unless CNS hits. OTOH I"ve used a buddys super sonic one with 110 barnes TAC and I've not had a single DRT on pigs yet. Same shot placements. In fact for some weird reason the supersonic pigs have run a bit further on average, but better trails and all dead.
Regardless, the 300/221 with supers will be as hearing safe as need be, with a suppressor inside the house.
Which to me is really moot, I think the chances of ever actually havign to shoot inside your house is about .0001 percent or such... and hearing is the last thing I"d worry about in that situation personally... I would be worried actually more about muzzle flash if that...
