Sorry that can be a bit confusing. Pistols, with the exception of frame materials, really haven't changed much for some decades. By newer I mean designed in the latter half of the 20th Century, which is pretty much anything you'd find unless you were buying a collector item or an antique.
That's my error, my apologies. All the safeties discussed here are mechanical in that they mechanically stop the gun from firing. I meant a separate manual safety. A firing pin block functions without activation from the user (automatic). A manual safety is triggered by the user. Almost all modern production guns have firing pin blocks (with some 1911s as an exception). Some guns have a manual safety in addition to the firing pin block. For instance the Beretta 92 FS has a firing pin block as well as the manual safety.
A shotgun prints much smaller groups than many anticipate, at least generally with the stock choke. It's not like the movies or cartoons. The group size increases with distance, but the pattern starts very small.
Any time you discharge a weapon you face the risk of an individual losing his/her life. Shooting to "wound" minimizes this reality. If you discharge a firearm, you aim center mass. That's the standard for civilians as well as police. The idea of shooting to wound is a complete fallacy and opens up a world of legal complications. If you shot someone in the arm or leg just to "wound", then in court the defense could argue that obviously your life wasn't in grave danger and you shouldn't have shot in the first place. You give a command to the intruder to stop (you SHOUT this command; one of the funniest things is taking courses where instructors tell students to do this and people mumble as if they're meek when they're about to shoot a gun). If the intruder doesn't stop and continues to move towards you and you feel your life is in danger, you aim center mass and press that trigger to the rear. You can stop and re-evaluate after each shot or a number of shots, that's up to you. A standard is to say "I shot to stop the threat". Many interpret this as stopping the forward motion of the person attacking you.
Another reason for aiming center mass is that under stress accuracy goes to hell. Even police officers are lucky to maintain 30% of their normal accuracy when in a defensive shooting. If you aim for an arm or leg and miss that might give the intruder time to close distance and assault you. You also run the risk of the missed shot ricocheting off your surroundings or passing through a wall and hurting someone else. Aiming center mass is legally and tactically the safest option.
A common phrase regarding police trade ins is that they are carried a lot and shot a little. Often they're shot for qualification and not much else. They typically have external wear from holsters and from riding around on a duty belt all day, but usually they are just fine internally.
+1. It's a knockoff versus the real thing.
A revolver was my first handgun, for many of these reasons. However I think some of them are actually misnomers. Revolvers can go out of time and when they jam you're really screwed (much rarer than a semiautomatic jam but much harder to fix). You're typically limited to 6-7 rds. Will that be enough? Maybe, maybe not. If the person you're talking about doesn't shoot much, as it sounds in this example, then they may need greater capacity to get those shots on target or there may be multiple attackers. Regardless of a revolver or semiauto, you want to put a certain amount of ammunition through the handgun to check function. Any firearm if stored properly will be fine in 25 years. Any firearm, even a revolver, if stored improperly will be a paperweight in 25 years. There are many reliable semiautos these days.
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I don't think missing and hoping the bad guy gets scared and runs away is a good strategy. My comment was that more capacity is a good thing, and coupled with reloads with revolvers being tricky even with good speed loaders, it is a downside to a revolver.