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The best ways to avoid stray bullets from being a danger to your neighbors:
1. End the confrontation as quickly as possible. You may be concerned about where your bullets go and overpenetration, but your attacker doesn't care at all. The faster you can shut him down the fewer bullets he will fire to endanger you and your neighbors/household members and the fewer bullets you will fire.
2. Hit your target. Bullets that travel through a person (particularly handgun bullets from premium self-defense ammunition) will be mostly spent by the time they exit--if they exit at all.
It's also important to keep in mind that if either his bullets or your bullets injure a neighbor/household member, their best chance for survival is for you to prevail so you can rapidly summon the authorities & medical attention.
Finally, remember what/who the threat is. You and your self-defense gun are not the threat. The attacker is the threat. Your first priority is to neutralize the threat as rapidly and as quickly as possible. You don't want to get too concerned with secondary issues until you have come up with a reasonable solution to dealing with the primary issue.
I guess what I'm saying is that as long as you are making reasonable choices in self-defense firearms you shouldn't get too wrapped up in worrying about overpenetration.
If you were trying to choose between a BAR (fully automatic .30-06 rifle) using FMJ and a .38 special handgun using premium expanding self-defense ammunition then I'd say that the BAR/FMJ combo poses too much of a threat of overpenetration to be a reasonable self-defense weapon in an urban environment. Choosing between between various handgun calibers is a different story. Make your choices based on shootability and on effectiveness and don't get overly bogged down in overpenetration concerns.
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