It's best to stick with the best brands as it's impossible to put a price tag on your life. Once you're actually in an defensive situation, it's too late to 2nd guess or wish you had bought the better choice. I recently bought my wife a s & w j frame airweight .38 "hammerless" (dao) with +P rating. She likes it VERY much as do I. In fact, I'm thinking about getting the .357 brother for myself. I would highly suggest ordering a wolff reduced tension spring kit and installing it or have your local gunsmith to do so. After installing spring kit and miminal smoothing up, her double action pull feels roughly 50% lighter, while still being 100% reliable. I DO NOT reccomend clipping coils off the factory springs in attempt to lighten pull weight however as the rest of the spring still has exact same compression rate, just being shorter for overall less weight BUT being shorter, isn't as reliable over time. Another thing, the heavier the bullet (as well as pressure), the more recoil it produces, so if you're leery of recoil, stick with standard pressure loads in 110 gr or 125 gr.bullets. Hornady offers excellent defensive ammo designed exclusively for good expansion and very low muzzleflash fired from short barrels as well as being fairly mild recoiling.