Thing I haven’t seen mentioned here is the necessity for frangible Ammo when running a higher powered cartridge in these situations. Don’t want to find myself having mistakenly used a Sunday school student as a backstop on a bad guy.
As others have said a .380 (which is what I carry loaded w/ 95 GR Hornady Critical defense) is better than nothing.
In a medium- to large-sized congregation I’d rather have a bunch of individuals spread across the worship area with .380s than a few with 45s.
There is no upside to carrying a bullet for deadly force purposes that was designed to break apart when it hits targets. Frangible bullets are for target purposes, not for antipersonnel use. There is a large body of ballistics research going back to the old IWBA showing that bullets designed to break up like the Glaser Safety Slug and the MagSafe rounds are no safer than standard JHP bullets, but they may fail to stop an attacker the way standard JHP bullets will do. So you get the worst of both worlds.
The best way to minimize collateral injuries is to train to the point that your are as good as you can be with your defensive firearm in terms of repeatable accuracy and tactical application.
