Again, thanks for the input.
Yeah, I considered those points. My big hangup is keeping a loaded pistol lying around (which a revolver would have to be, to be effective). Common sense tells me that by the time I retrieve a loaded gun from a safe, or load an unloaded revolver, I'll be dead.
With a semiautomatic, I can keep a loaded mag out of the gun, and slap it in in seconds. Even if I chose to keep the mag in the gun and it somehow found its way into young hands, you could pull the trigger all day and it won't fire until the slide is racked.
Plus, I then have 16 rounds at my disposal as opposed to 6. If I ever need to use it, I'll feel better knowing that. While I can put a nice grouping in the middle of the head of a paper target at 10 meters, I'm not naive enough to think I would be that effective in a gunfight.
Otherwise, I would definitely just use the .38, and the only reason I am unloading it (pun intended) is that's how I justified the expense of my Walther PPX (which by the way is a very nice gun; little recoil, and a much lighter trigger - even though its DAO - than the S&W revolver).
