Your occupation would not affect in any way what would be needed to stop an attacker.
The fact that the likelihood is low will not have any impact on the event, should it happen.
I agree that lifestyle, occupation, probability, likelihood and other risk factors do not affect what is required to effect a stop.
I do not think that it follows that police equipment or tactics need to be adopted by everyone who wants to be the most effective at stopping attacks. One of the reasons police equipment is different was already pointed out in this thread: civilians succeed when they break contact with an attacker, while police are expected to pursue an attacker until they are stopped or apprehended. This does not mean that civilians need "less" effective tools. What it means is that civilians have an opportunity to prioritize different criteria, whereas the different requirements of law enforcement call for the prioritization of others.
Civilians often choose to prioritize criteria like "ease of carry," "small size," and "light weight." The LCP was the #1 seller for many years. While these criteria probably do trade-off some potential for effectiveness in stopping an attack, a civilian can also choose to prioritize other criteria. Some prioritize deep penetration and they carry 10mm, 44 Magnum, or 454 Casull because they live in BEAR country. Bear gun threads are a perennial thing, and whatever people are doing must be working because the number of people killed by bears in North America was 56 in the last 20 years, whereas 48 law enforcement officers were killed in felonious acts just in 2019.
If I were to suggest some practical criteria to prioritize over the often cited advantages of lightweight, higher capacity and faster reloads, they would be safety in concealed carry, ease of obtaining first shot hits, prevention of unintentional discharges during use of force incidents, and adaptation to individual needs. These criteria are not exclusive of semiautomatic pistols, but they also do not exclude revolvers. When criteria like these are considered above the needs that are unique to law enforcement, the revolver, and the .38 Special could be a good choice.
The double-action revolver without a manual safety is well regarded as one of the safest actions to carry concealed. No other action type has a lower risk of errors in the manual of arms or manipulation of a safety or unintentional discharges from garment snags, holster failures, and mishandling. While some semi-automatic pistols may present an equally low risk, the pistols police carry in a duty holster do not need to make concessions for risks in concealment. They have gone to increasingly shorter and lighter triggers.
A stable, heavy revolver with a long barrel and long sight radius, good sights or an optic and a consistent, smooth trigger is one of the best handguns to facilitate first shot hits. When 38 Special is used in a large, heavy revolver the shooter feels very little recoil and they're not likely to develop a flinch. They must master the double-action trigger, but this is a skill that once learned is not likely to be forgotten in the heat of an incident. A person is more likely to revert to flinching and other bad habits they learned practicing on a lightweight polymer semiautomatic with a reciprocating slide mass, especially if it was also a larger caliber -- like the .40 S&W that has been so popular with police for decades. When combined with lightweight plastic pistols, the result is increased difficulty. A lot of police agencies have acknowledged this and are hoping to solve it by switching to 9mm -- a move to a cartridge that is more like .38 Special.
Unintentional discharges during the course of incidents is a serious problem -- almost certainly more serious than discharges from everyday mishandling when the muzzle isn't likely to be pointed at someone. I believe the frequency of unintentional discharges during the use of force is alarming. We have identified certain phenomena that explain some of it such as startle response, trigger affirmation, sympathetic grasp reflex, and contralateral contraction. We've known for at least 20 years that training people to keep their finger off the trigger alone does not work. Long, heavy Double-Action triggers alone also do not solve this problem, but I believe they decrease the risk compared to striker-action triggers some of which have become very short and light indeed.
By "adaptation to individual needs" I'm referring to handguns that are better suited to people who may have difficulty operating some of the more popular pistols. The S&W EZ series is an obvious attempt to address this need. Difficulty racking slides is one issue, but people can have requirements for other adaptations as well. Some people only have the use of one hand or one arm. Some people have very weak strength in their hands and wrists. The double-action trigger of a revolver can be a challenge of its own, but revolvers are adapted to a number of different needs that pistols may not be and people can choose them for this reason over what the police choose for their reasons.
Large revolvers in 38 Special can be a good choice for some people in spite of being ill-suited to most police work. They can be good choices for meaningful reasons and not just because civilians somehow don't need the same level of attack-stopping effectiveness that law enforcement or the military does. Civilians can prioritize criteria that police and military are often compelled to compromise for their unique priorities.
