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First, congrats to OP for being able to get the women in his life to carry. I'm one for three in that department and that's probably more due to the fact that my older daughter is married to an Army Reserves officer who is an Iraq vet (they got their CHLs together) than my influence. My wife and younger daughter haven't been that interested in the entire deal.

Second, towards Thomas. Like others on this forum, I also have an engineering degree and when I first started out I really got into the physics of the caliber wars but then I began to understand what Keith B, Excalibur, my son and son-in-law (who are both infantry vets with multiple combat tours) were saying about the biologic side of things. And the bottom line I got to was this: There is no magic one shot automatic stop bullet in a hand gun one is normally able to conceal.

Anything with the enough muzzle energy will more than likely poke a hole. So the way to win in a gunfight is to poke enough holes where it matters (i.e. Center of Mass, vital organs, causing loss of the will to fight by critically low blood pressure in a hopefully short amount of time). And to do that requires that one is able to hit where they need to hit. In other words, in practical application, shot placement is probably more important than the difference in "power" between .38, 9mm, .40 S&W, .357 SIG or .45 ACP. Plenty of people have been made to stop whatever they were doing with all of the above calibers. And if one misses with any of the above, one's handgun is nothing more than a noisemaker.

So, since shot placement is king, then it must be of paramount importance to be able to hit your target with whatever you carry. If you can get acceptable accuracy (including follow-up shots) with your megablaster 2000 in 1-inch caliber, then great. But for many, larger calibers are more difficult to control, especially on follow-up shots.

I hope this helps explain why there are so many calibers out there. It also probably explains why some really support the caliber they've chosen.