Any gun is better than no gun. A .38 has much more stopping power than a .22, but not as much as a .45.
I prefer my Winchester Defender short-barrel shotgun.
Unless you carry your sidearm around the house with you, (and how many do that?), you're going to have to get the weapon and have it ready to fire, and in the time it takes to do that, you might as well grab something that no intruder is going to walk away from, and that's a shotgun.