The mistakes I see being made here are a lack of clarity of what you are trying to acompoish.
1. Vast majoirty of people are not super shooters, nor do they have the time to maintian the type of proficiney you need to be leathly effective.
Most of us have to make trade offs. A hard core driving school is more likley to pay off than range time.
2. That said, we are not the police or swat, we are trying to deal wiht a host of possible areas (in my case we have dogs get in the back yard, and the one I dealt with the dog came close to death as it came after me).
3. Who cares about penetration? If you don't hit, then penetration is useless (or you hit a neighbor).
So, if the mission is to be able to wake up in the dark, and you find someone in the house, you simply wnat to get rounds going, impact, mess up, scare, hurt and throw the intruded into a caniption fit.
Shotshells do that well, a shotgun is hard to keep and keep secure. If an intruder is chewed up, badly wounded and out of action, thats what counts. Better those hits than 15 rounds of 9mm that hits nothing (try it in the dark and see how you do).
Longest hallway in my house is 20 ft. I wear glasses.
My only reservation for the Judge is if it is reliable. 3 inch is the only way to go for this.
Also makes a great yard check out for dogs and moose.
With the improved defense loads, you can pick how you want to run it (my take is 3 rounds of #4 or 00, two rounds with the disks). Mess em up and then put some holes, and not risk others
Pick yours, keep a 45 for the last shot if you want. Figure out how you want to run it and setup and train that way.
Once I can get to the gun safe I have more lethal options.