Millions of similarly ignorant people trust their lives to .22's and .25's, too. that does not make those calibers decent manstoppers, just like the .38 isn't, either. What happens, 80% of the time, is the attacker flees at just the sight of the gun, so the effectiveness of it or skill of defender, is irrelevant. Half of the remaining 20% of the time, when you FIRE (EVEN IF YOU MISS) the attacker flees THEN, regardless of caliber, gun, or skill level, too. So the ease of having a little .25 or .22, over the clunk of a .38 in your pocket, makes a lot of sense, but really, now, a 5" long, 9 oz Keltec 380 is VERY easy to always have in a front pants pocket, and it hits just as "hard" as a .38 snub, using typical ammo in both. the locked breech 380 can be HANDLOADED to hit HARDER than the .38 snub, as provable on animals, if you really want to, altho I'd not favore the too light Kt 380 for such loads. I've used them in the 18 oz Star Pony, tho, and it and they worked just fine on animals and in my front pants pocket holster.
I first hot-loaded the Pony in 1975, using a dead-soft lead cast hp bullet, dropped by the (no longer available) 80 gr swc Lee mold, with a hollow nose added in a lathe. Driven to 1200+ fps, it worked nicely indeed. I did not (and do not) care that if fouled the bore badly in 7 shots. By then, I'd either be dead or have won the battle. There's no need to practice with such rds, just with similar recoiling loads, and a very few of the duty rds to assure reliablity.
