It really depends more on your level of training and skill than anything else. Simply choose a gun that is reliable, that you can shoot accurately, and that is easy to control for multiple fast shots. Use the most powerful gun that allows these things.

There are dozens of good pistols out there. Which particular one you choose for defense is very low down in the hierarchy of importance when compared to your mindset, marksmanship, gunhandling and tactical skill.

Glocks, SIGs, Berettas, Springfields, Rugers, S&Ws, HKs and more will all serve well for defense if you will. It's not the arrow, it's the Indian.

start going to the range and trying out different weapons, then you can answer this question yourself.there are many ,many types of handguns.
i can say of the caliber you will probably use either 9mm,.40cal, or .45cal all good for home defense.you will have to find out which one suites you the best...

Originally Posted by Harris

How does one choose a hand gun for home defense? There are many types of guns models in this forum that I am overwhelmed their quality and fire power.

I prefer a gun that can fire multiple shots and stop home invasion robbers dead cold.

You need training in order to understand the basics of firearm ownership. You can get information on an internet forum, but you can't get training. Find a local gunshop that can either provide basic training, or can point you to someone who can do it.

All handguns suitable for home defense will fire multiple shots. None of them will always stop "robbers dead cold".

If you are not willing to get training, then you would do better with a shotgun....

PhilR.

Harris: Sir; The answers provided are outstanding. Each of us found what we have, traded, sold, thrown away many by the relationships of friends, acquaintances, what we saw, gun show and on and on .
To provide you with a simple answer "which is the best for said job"
Guns by the very nature are all compromises. [I'll not go into any short, long, fat, skinny, round, rectangles, }
Your thought purports 'house self defense' Shotguns come to mind.
Practiced; you need nothing more. Limited practice will cause more problems than solved.
Give considerations to your surroundings, family, friends, animals, neighborhood, lifestyle.
What will be the most reliable, convenient, simple to operate under duress.
Without practice, and thought; you have a problem.
Do I have a favorite? YES. Do I have practiced thinking? YES. Am I paranoid? No. Do I give considerations to my own words. YES

Sir; I respect your concerns; I too; respect the thoughts already supplied.

Having mentioned PRACTICE earlier; I'll MENTION PRACTICE; PRACTICE; PRACTICE; with what-ever you choose. Without PRACTICE you loose.

Craig

Take the N.R.A.Safety course. If you have a "significant other", enroll that person also. All adults in the household should be familiar with the weapons on hand. At the course, you will be given a basic familiarization of the handguns types. It will also include a trip to a local range for some hands on safety experience. Your instructor will be better to help with what would be good for you. You should be given some booklets to keep that have the info in it, also. A test will be given, and you'll recieve a nice Certificate of Award.
Your local gun store/ range should have a list of available instructors. Mine have their cards right on the counter. The store/ range may even offer a regular class, themselves.

Originally Posted by drummin man 627

Take the N.R.A.Safety course. If you have a "significant other", enroll that person also. All adults in the household should be familiar with the weapons on hand. At the course, you will be given a basic familiarization of the handguns types. It will also include a trip to a local range for some hands on safety experience. Your instructor will be better to help with what would be good for you. You should be given some booklets to keep that have the info in it, also. A test will be given, and you'll recieve a nice Certificate of Award.
Your local gun store/ range should have a list of available instructors. Mine have their cards right on the counter. The store/ range may even offer a regular class, themselves.

Don't forget the kiddo's. Their training needs to be a bit different, age dependant, but if you have some include them from the get go.

Aside from the actually handgun selected, keep in mind your home structure. I don't like magnum rounds for inside the house. Unless you get lucky and hit your target or a wood stud solid, that magnum bullet is going through drywall, sheetrock, paneling, etc. Also, the layout of the rooms, especially bedrooms is important. More than likely, home self defense will occur when everyone is asleep. Finally, before you make that important purchase ask yourself this, if and when I am awakened from a dead sound sleep, can I remember where the gun is stored, or is a round chambered, and can I actually use it on another human being. Sorry if all this off the "which gun do I get" topic, but it all goes hand in hand. Many people have had guns for self defense, but tragically the perpetrator in the dark clothes was willing and able to overpower the homeowner. That could make for a bad rest of your life scenario.

Originally Posted by SigZagger

Aside from the actually handgun selected, keep in mind your home structure. I don't like magnum rounds for inside the house. Unless you get lucky and hit your target or a wood stud solid, that magnum bullet is going through drywall, sheetrock, paneling, etc.

Ehhh. A non-magnum like a 9mm or .45 will sail though all typical building materials just like a .357. Check out the Box of Truth web site. I wouldn't even consider that when making a decision. You have to make the hits on the bad guy - ALL rounds powerful enough to stop a human will go through half a dozen interior walls.

Also, the layout of the rooms, especially bedrooms is important. More than likely, home self defense will occur when everyone is asleep.

Do you have stats or a study supporting that? The Armed Citizen column in the NRA magazines, for example, suggests that an awful lot of home defense situations DON'T happen while everyone is fast asleep, but rather in the evening hours when most people are still awake. If you have reliable info supporting the "2AM random home invasion" theory, though, I'd love to see it. Stats about these things are really difficult to find.

None of my so-called "stats" come from studies written on paper. I was just relaying my experiences to a new gun owner from actual "real life" police calls I responded to when I worked the street. Stats can be anything one wants them to be. Nothing can replace actual events that occur when dealing with deadly force. Regarding, "you have to make the hits on the bad guy". Be real. My point was, in the heat of the situation, whether at 11 pm or 4 am with your heart rate punched into tubo mode, making center mass hits is a lot easier said then done. Many other things come into play, assuming one is not sitting in a chair, facing the front door waiting for the bad guy to kick it in and yell, this is a robbery, I'm coming into your house to hurt you. In short, I have no written stats as you want. To me stats are for batting averages. No, we are talking about one human being pointing a loaded firearm at another. We are not all created equal when it comes to the will to pull the trigger. Hey, that could be a stat, I'm sure I saw it written somewhere.

Originally Posted by SigZagger

None of my so-called "stats" come from studies written on paper. I was just relaying my experiences to a new gun owner from actual "real life" police calls I responded to when I worked the street. Stats can be anything one wants them to be. Nothing can replace actual events that occur when dealing with deadly force. Regarding, "you have to make the hits on the bad guy". Be real. My point was, in the heat of the situation, whether at 11 pm or 4 am with your heart rate punched into tubo mode, making center mass hits is a lot easier said then done. Many other things come into play, assuming one is not sitting in a chair, facing the front door waiting for the bad guy to kick it in and yell, this is a robbery, I'm coming into your house to hurt you. In short, I have no written stats as you want. To me stats are for batting averages. No, we are talking about one human being pointing a loaded firearm at another. We are not all created equal when it comes to the will to pull the trigger. Hey, that could be a stat, I'm sure I saw it written somewhere.

Hey, I wasn't trying to be a wiseass or anything. I was just looking for something other than anecdotal evidence of your claim. Statistics aren't absolutes, but they do illustrate trends. Anecdotes are fine for what they are, but if we relied only on anecdotal evidence, we'd probably still believe the world was flat.

As far as making the hits on bad guys, obviously it is easier said than done, but that doesn't make it any less important. The difficulty of making good hits does nothing to change the fact that a 9mm will go all the way through your house, just like a .357. So once again, you have to hit the bad guy to make sure the bullet stays in him. If you don't, it hardly matters if you use a Magnum, a .223 or a .45.

The size/caliber of the gun or the man behind the trigger can be argued forever. It just gets me when the "stat" word is used, or "I read that..." when the discussion involves the human element. I just hate to see a newbie or a seasoned handgun owner/shooter become the shooting victim due to a turnaround assault from a perpetrator, whether it occurred in a home or was street crime. I may be wrong, but I believe the original poster was new to guns and I just wanted to pass along the serious and sometimes darker side of defending ones castle.

My POV:

Shotguns are best for SOME home defense situations. The cha-chunk of a shotgun being loaded will scare the willies out of anyone, and a 12 guage blast will stop someone better than almost any pistol round, especially with a slug. You'll also be much more likely to hit someone with a shotgun.

I don't want a shotgun. Why? I live in an apartment, and fast, hasty reactions under stress in a small area means you'll probably wind up clumsy with a larger gun.

I also don't want 9mm. Yes, shot placement is key, and training is good, but nobody, despite training, can tell exactly how well they'll shoot in a very stressful situation until they're in it. So, I went with a .45 because you'll probably wind up breaking bones if you miss something vital, which is more potent than a smaller 9mm round. Will a 9mm round to the heart stop someone? Yes. But how accurate under stress, no matter how much trainging, are you to hit someone's heart or spinal cord? I can't answer that for myself, and anyone who hasn't been in this situation can't answer that, either. In any event where you imagine what might happen, it's best to be over-prepared than to think your skills alone should save the day. Conversely, if you simply can't handle shooting a certain caliber, then you do need to look lower. But skill plus a higher power caliber is in my opinion the way to go.

Skills are necessary, yes, and training a must, but if someone's charging you or your family in your house and you only shoot that person the first time in the shoulder, would you rather that shot be a 9mm or a 45/357? I personally chose the more powerful round. That's my current philosophy on caliber.

A .40 will do the job very well, but then it comes down to a matter of preference. I don't like shooting .40. Far too snappy. .45 is more pushy and much nicer to shoot in my opinion. Then you can bring up the magnums. A .357 revolver is very powerful and a wheel gun won't be any issues. You need to go to a range and try different calibers, but also keep in mind that the same caliber will feel different in different guns.

One thing I would invest in is a gun with a laser sight or a flashlight/laser combo (meaning a gun with a Picatinny rail). I'm grappling with wether it's better to have a flashlight in hand and only a laser on the gun, but either way, a laser will allow much more accuracy in stressful situations in a darker environment.

What I'd try: Ruger or Smith & Wesson .357 magnum, Beretta PX4 in .40 cal, Smith & Wesson M&P 40 or 45, SiG 220 (my personal fav), SiG 229 in .40,

Anyway, my current .02!

There will be as many opinions as there are people who reply. All I can tell you is what I have.

In the 1st floor MiniVault is a S&W Model 66 loaded with standard .357 Magnum 158 grain JHP and two speedloader reloads. My wife and daughter prefer revolvers.

In the 2nd floor MaxiVault is a Colt Trooper loaded with .38 S&W Special +P+ HP and two speedloader reloads; and an SRT Matrix 9mm suppressor, which, if I have time, gets screwed onto the end of my Beretta 92 fitted with Crimson Trace grips, and an extra magazine of 9mm 147 grain HP. The Beretta is my preference if I'm presented with a choice; I've never had to, but I suspect shooting even a .22 indoors without hearing protection will leave everyone at least temporarily deaf.

Everything else is in the big safes.

Make sure your choice is what YOU want.

You should also have a plan for several different scenarios. Go over these with family members. If your laying in bed and your wife jumps out of bed and right into your line of site, it really doesn't matter how good of a shot you are. Also, if my kids are not with me, I'm not going to be leaving my bedroom. I will stand my ground and wait for the police. That makes my shotgun the right choice for me. Granted, I have my Glock 23 on the night stand. I just have to fight my way to the closet to get the 12 guage...
I agree with what everyone else has said about the right weapon for you and practice, but have a plan as well and make sure all of your loved ones are on the same page.
be safe