Well I HAVE been on the receiving as well as delivery end of a few. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that accuracy matters! And if the situation demands the use of force, good training takes over. Your average bad guy 99.9% of the time is untrained and is capitalizing on fear factor from most encounters. When faced by well trained people, bad guy's 99.9% of the time lose. I have no doubt in my mind that if the situation called for force, my little wife would fall back on her training as instinct. She can pull all 5 rounds from her little lady smith in under 6 seconds with all 5 in the kill zone. She's not a police officer and would, 99.9% of the time, NOT have to worry about cover penetration. Civilian encounters are usually blitz attacks and rarely, if ever, are fired from cover. I put her through her paces when training her. Shooting with heart rate accelerated, shooting after running for a distance, shooting after pushups (that was fun to watch her get madder every one), shooting after grappling with my oldest daughter. I have to admit, my little woman is probably one of the better trained civilians out there. Confidence in her equipment is key for her. As I said, if she doesn't have 100% confidence she can hit her mark with EVERY shot, then she will break down in a tight situation. Heavier bullets don't mean a damn thing if they don't find their mark!