Great story!
As to the handgun question...........guys, I'm going to hurt feelings when I say this, but "stopping power" as it's sold in the gun world is a wonderful gimmick to fill gun magazine pages with. Everyone loves to tout the old story about the army using Colt .38 revolvers unsuccessfully in the Phillipines against charging, kris-wielding warriors and how, from that moment, the Army knew it had to get back into a 45 caliber pistol. That's true. What NEVER gets told is how, even though the 1911 pistol was only in its design phase, they got a whole mess of .45 handguns sent to them there during the fighting (many, many old 45 Colt SAAs still in the federal arsenals) and you know what? They didn't stop the guys worth anything either! When shot while running from ten feet away, the incoming warriors had a horrible habit of splitting a soldier's head open with their large blade and then dying shortly afterwards, just like they did when hit with the 38 Colt. The reliable means of stopping them was shooting them when they were farther away, which usually was done with the rifles. It's a fact, people, look it up---only look it up in a book, not a magazine trying to sell you Gold Dots.
Now, am I saying that handguns are useless? No. Am I saying that a 45 doesn't hit any harder than a 38? No. What I'm saying is that NONE of them are the Hammer of Thor. You're hitting somebody with something which weighs significantly less than an ounce. Fast as it is, it can only impart so much impulse to them. All the movies you've seen where guys are shot with a 44 magnum (yes, I love Dirty Harry too) and go flying backwards are absolutely entertaining and absolute crap. Here's proof, and a fun experiment:
--Take a 44 magnum, take a pumpkin, and a 1/4" steel plate to your local range.
--Make a horizontal cut from the top down into the pumpkin with a knife and insert the steel plate down into it.
--Leave steel-reinforced pumpkin down range and walk back to your gun, preferably at least 25 yards away.
--Shoot steel plate inside pumpkin (if you haven't figured this out, the pumpkin is there to hold the plate up and also to catch any small fragments of bullet which separate off from hitting the plate).
--Notice that the plate and pumpkin, which together weigh about twenty pounds, shifted just a few inches further away from you....they didn't go flying off into the sunset.
--Understand that if this fairly healthy handgun cartridge couldn't move twenty pounds of steel and pumpkin a foot, they're not going to move a 200 pound man more than an inch or two.
That, again, doesn't mean they're useless. Real stopping power comes from shot placement. Disable the electrical responses of the body, by either destroying the brain or spinal column, OR destroy the physical structure of the body to an extent that, regardless of willpower or drugs or adrenaline, it's impossible for the system to continue functioning and moving forward (pelvis/hips no longer fit together because the joint is in fragments). Being able to hit where you're trying to hit, consistently, when you're scared to death and your own adrenaline is up, is the key. A guy who has practiced like holy hell with his Ruger MkIII 22 and can punch shot after shot into the areas he needs to when the chips are down, is WAY better armed than the guy with the 45 who can barely stay on paper when he has hearing protection, eye protection, and perfect lighting on an orange target in a nice shooting range. Now, larger calibers create larger wound channels, and you absolutely gain some probability of peripheral damage helping you out and hitting something that your bullet passed by; but again, you have to able to get close in the first place when it counts, and that comes from either luck or a LOT of practice.
If you shoot a 45 very, very well and are so familiar with your gun that it's an intuitive instrument to you that you don't have to think about at all, then great. If you can't afford to practice 45 to get to (and maintain) that level, then a 9mm that you shoot extremely well beats the hell out of that 45 you practice with four times a year. Thousands of gunfights were won in the old west with .36 caliber black powder revolvers which where shooting balls of the same weight as a modern 380 bullet at FAR lower velocity, and I promise you, today's lazy, TV watching crowd is NOT tougher than our ancestors of the 19th century who walked everywhere and actually worked for a living--they carried a lot more muscle and a lot less fat. The difference is that back in the day, people tended to be much better shots because of their lifestyle--there wasn't even weapons training up through the first World War in the United States, it was just assumed you knew how to shoot.
I carry a 1911 Commander or a full sized Glock in 45 (depending on attire) because I've put more thousands rounds through those guns than everything else combined, but it's the familiarity/ability that makes me effective with them, not the caliber. If all I have is a 22, I'm still better armed than the vast majority of people--not because of innate skill (my sisters both have more of that than I do) but because of the countless boring hours spent getting good.
Whatever you carry, practice practice practice practice practice and then practice some more. If you come across somebody who feels that he's better armed than you because his number is bigger and his bullets were featured in last month's Guns and Ammo, you can pretty safely assume that he is probably not very good, regardless of the awesomeness of his equipment. You can give a crappy violinist a Stradivarius, but don't expect fine music.
my usual carry s a 9mm though but I pack my little 22lr kit guns when camping and hiking. Not too worried about bears and such so 22 is fine for the woods. Downtown though.............then I want bigger bullets 
