You can carry a $1k gun, or a $350 gun, the results are the same, when you do it right, every time.
.45ACP/9mm/.38 Special/.22 LR or WMR. They all go boom. Where are you plascing? Are you placing in a 'target' profile, putting one bullet right behind the other? On paper, that's great, but for Center of Mass of the human body, the more holes, the merrier.
Full metal flat points/ semiwadcutters/wadcutters/big and small hollowpoints, that is your choice, your money. From my P.O.V., from a revolver, Elmer Keith started the ball rolling with semi-wadcutters. Big-city PD's, circa 1950's, and that old Civil Defense organization, in the '60's, used full wadcutters. Hollowpoints that don't fail as designed, become wadcutters, so why not skip the failure, and just use WC's or SWC's?
When I was a GI in Thailand, it was my Model 15, and that Winchester ammo, that they now call 'target' ammunition. I was not any military law enforcement type. I was on the fence, on the 'back 40' of the airbase.