Priorities:
1) I am attempting to make a scary person cease a course of action that is, or is potentially, harmful to me.
2) The tool I have at my disposal is a pistol.
3) How can I use this pistol to make him stop with minimum risk to myself?
The answer to number three, for me, is "shoot at him with it until he stops doing whatever it was that made me start shooting at him in the first place." If the first shot misses and he runs off, guess what? The gun has done its job. If it takes the whole magazine plus my backup gun, and he is so determined that he doesn't stop until he's dead, guess what? The gun has done its job. From where I stand, priority one is to make the guy cease and desist, and the pistol is a pretty narrow spectrum tool, good only for poking holes in folks, so that is how I will try to use it, however we shouldn't confuse incidentals with results: The result I am looking for is the cessation of hostilities on Mr. Bad Guy's part, and whether it is accomplished via death, injury, surrender, flight, deus ex machina in the form of the cops showing up, or his sudden discovery of the Eight-Fold Path is immaterial to me...