OT: MGoGUN discussion: What's your favorite hand gun/semi auto pistol/rifle??

For home defense? You're worried about late night break-ins while you're sound asleep, I'd go pump action shotgun. Loud enough to scare intruders away when you pump it, highly unlikely to miss should you actually need to use it staggering out of bed at 3am.

Emergency concealed carry? Hammerless revolver. You get jumped and hit on the head and need to pull a weapon and fire to save your life, a hammerless revolver will easily pull from a holster and won't jam. 

My favorite pistol? CZ 97. Cheapest .45 you can get match grade, the internal slide rails help the barrel seat tight, as well. 

Entry level pistol? Buy a glock. I may personally dispise the human piece of garbage who stole the company, but the company makes the Honda civic of pistols. Relatively good, pretty reliable, and extremely cheap. 

1.  No experience with that gun.

2.  Anything Sig Sauer or Glock I swear by.  Others love Beretta but I have no experience besides shooting them.

3. Hoppes is good shit 

So many good comments.  Particularly, know your firearm.  Practice enough to be able to use it via muscle memory.  I have put a few hundred rounds through my Sig Sauer P239 .40 cal and I can field strip it blindfolded.

i like shotgun for home defense but wife hates them so I stick with my pistol 

Sounds like you already made your purchase but otherwise I would have recommended making friends at your local gun range and renting a few different styles and manufacturers to see what you liked best. 

I have a Smith & Wesson M&P full size 9mm and a Benelli SuperNova 12ga. Neither leaves the house other than to go to the range or back woods. 

The full size PX4 Storm is my favorite hand gun of all time. Simply amazing. Impossible for Concealed carry.  Glock 43 for that. 

Time for you to move 

AK-47.

The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.

I posted some advice on another reply but to answer the OP. 

1. I don't own one but didn't particularly like the way it felt in my hand. I just felt like I couldn't get my hand as high up on the grip as I wanted. I also hate the slide mounted decocker/safety. Decocker is fine to break your grip to reach, but it's a deal breaker for a safety to not be able to reach it without shifting my grip. The rotating barrel design os is pretty cool and unique and appeals to me as an engineer. 

2. My favorite pistol is a CZ-75B. It's a bit of a hipster cult classic compared to more popular guns, but is an incredibly shooting handgun that feels poured into your hand. My favorite rifle is my Bushmaster ACR. I've wanted one since playing video games before I got into guns. Recently I got one and went through the long painful process of obtaining approval from the ATF to make it into a short barrel rifle, as well as the going through the process to get a suppressor. For how much time and money I invested into it, it was still totally worth it.

3. I use M-Pro7 which is a low/no smell solvent as my cleaner and Mobil One 10W for oil, and white lithium grease as well. I know a lot of people that use CLP for everything and it works fine. 

Glock 19! Can’t go wrong with a Glock. Their Safe Action trigger is very, uh, safe. Glocks are so reliable. I agree with the poster above who mentioned going single/double action could get confusing for a beginner. And yes, pump a bunch of rounds through to get comfy. I also have a Ruger SR22 for plinking and playing around with single/double action. Guns for self-defense—you need A LOT of practice. It’s more of a lifestyle than a habit. You need to consider what you wear, where you go, are you drinking or not, are you crossing into a weapons-free zone...and guns for home defense need to be readily accessible. Like in a drawer or a biometric safe. And as others mentioned, you have to consider the other people in the house and others who visit. For kids, I say eliminate the curiosity. Show them you have a fun. Tell them what it can do and the damage it can cause. Teach them what to do if they see it somewhere it shouldn’t be. That way, you’ve eliminated the curiosity and temptation for them to handle it if they happen upon it. 

I feel a shotgun is the most effective home defense firearm. A pump action. Not your daddy’s deer gun—one made for self-defense. Don’t have to be precise. They are intimidating. And the sound of a 12 gauge shell being racked is VERY loud...which is good. 

Why did you move somewhere where they feature break ins?

Lots of good comments in here so I'll simply reiterate the most important point:  whatever gun(s) you have (and there are many good ones out there), train regularly.  Your brain is still the most important weapon and the firearm is only there if all else fails.  

I’ll never buy anything other than H&K. Simply the best.

If I were ever to own or carry a firearm, for the record and big brother's spying eyes, I DON'T.... but it would be a Smith and Wesson Shield.  I'm very familiar with the 9mm only because ammo is fairly inexpensive and if I were to decide to own and carry, i would want to shoot fairly often, to be proficient and practiced.  However if you wanted a little more knock down power, they do also chamber the Shield in a .40 and now a .45.    Great, smooth shooting little piece that hasn't had a jamb or miss fire in several thousand rounds.

I would also consider a Double Tap derringer chambered in .45.... cuz well..... bigger holes are better.  The DT is not a weapon to take to the range and put more than a couple rounds down range, unless you like feeling as if someone pounded your hand with a sledge.  She is purely a critical defense tool.   

all the above is hypothetical, of course.

Thorn.  It's a bit old school, but available to the masses and you have to earn it.

Can’t beat simple ol’ 12 gauge buck shot for home defense. Cheap and by far the most effective. 

My kit:

Springfield XD-S .45ACP for carry

.300 BLK/AAC w/ 7.5” barrel AR-15 for “rifle” with a suppressor is my load out for zombie apocalypse.

My favorite gun is one that is registered, safeguarded, and used only by mentally sound people with a history of responsible behavior.

Please, be this kind of gun owner. Meanwhile, I own a Remington 20 gauge.

I've live in an inner city neighborhood for basically my whole life and have never felt the need to get a gun to protect myself.  It wouldn't make a positive difference if I did, anyway.

To each their own, I guess.

boooo, guns are bad

To the OP questions..  

Beretta PX4 is a good quality, reliable weapon.  I don't own one but have shot one a few times.  I had a Beretta 92 for many years and when I got my concealed carry permit found it to be too heavy for daily carry.  It was just too bulky and uncomfortable.

For daily carry I got a Smith and Wesson M&P Shield.  It has a very narrow profile and is comfortable enough that I almost don't know it's there when it's in the IWB (Inside the Waist Band) holster.  For a gun with a very short barrel I find it to be incredibly accurate.  That being said, I am not a big and tall guy, and friends of mine with much larger hands than me find it uncomfortable to shoot because of it being too small for their hands.

For cleaning a pistol I use Hoppe's No.9 Bore cleaner first on cotton patches followed by a wire bore brush and another few passes with the Hoppe's.  Finally I use Hoppe's Elite Gun Oil on patches.  I then go over the receiver with an old toothbrush and some of the bore cleaner on the dirty areas.  I wipe it clean with a dry cotton cloth followed by a small dot of oil on any parts that move or have metal on metal contact.  You can usually tell by the wear lines in the finish.

For a quicker cleaning I also have a product called Hoppe's Bore Snake.  It's essentially a piece of para-cord that has sections for each of the steps mentioned above.  one section has the wire brush built in another to dip in the bore cleaner and another for the oil.  Make sure you get one in the appropriate caliber for your gun.  you simply put the solvent and oil on the appropriate sections and run it completely through the barrel several times and the bore is clean.  You should still disassemble and clean the receiver frequently.

Finally I do agree with the other on here with using an AR-15 for home defense, but as someone who is just getting familiar with firearms, you may find a pump action shot gun with buckshot or some other heavy load for home defense to be more your speed.  a bit less reliant on accuracy in a stressful situation like defending from a break in and plenty intimidating when a criminal is staring at such a large diameter barrel pointed in their direction.

Take as many defense and shooting courses as you can.  If nothing else you may gain a new and enjoyable pass time.

Hope you find this useful.

Smith and Wesson Shield single stack is easy to carry because its light and thin. The 9mm doesn't have the knock down power of my Glock 45 cal modle 30 but it's much skinnier and more compact.