Really, there are a set of practical problems with the notion of shooting to wound:
1) A handgun is considered a short ranged weapon not because the bullet is incapable of delivering a fatal wound beyond a certain range but because the weapon is simply not accurate enough in the average trained hand to be useful. At seven meters against a stationary target on a range, your average shooter will struggle to get shots inside a 3 to 5 inch grouping with any handgun. Under stress the chances are this is going to get even worse. Thus you tend to aim for the part of the body you're most likely to hit: the center of whatever you're shooting at simply because it offers you the best chance to hit.
2) A bullet, just about any bullet (the qualification is because there exist novelty rounds that are all but incapable of causing a fatal wound as they'd struggle just to break skin) can cause a fatal wound. There are huge variables you simply cannot account for. A bullet might fragment causing what would otherwise be a minor wound to be fatal when a fragment pierces an artery or vital organ. The bullet itself might go on a wandering path when it hits the body. There are places that you can shoot the average adult with a particular gun and reasonably expect them to live and even places you could shoot someone where they'd reasonably make a full recovery but unless you are Artemis herself and have icewater coursing through your veins and are armed with the perfect weapon for the moment, you can't count on making that shot. Thus you should simply assume that if you point a gun at a person and pull the trigger, that person is going to die.
3) When you decide to use extreme force, it is assumed you are trying to stop an extreme threat. This means you want to resolve that threat efficiently. If someone is properly motivated (by drugs, emotions, etc) pain is an inconsequential distraction. To put it simply, the only way to stop a punch is to ensure that the physical mechanisms required to throw the punch are disabled. This means severing muscles, breaking bones, and tearing joints. So, if I wanted to make some theoretical person stop advancing on me in some obviously menacing fashion, this means I'd need to aim a fairly powerful round somewhere near the center of the leg in order to ensure massive muscle damage and, ideally, a shattered bone. You'll note that this will result in fragments of various materials (copper, lead and bone) being spread through the immediate area which just happens to contain a major artery meaning that just the obviously predictable result of this shot could easily be fatal. Worse still, that shot has only disabled a single leg so I'd have to make that very hard shot twice just to be sure the person can't walk. But that still leaves them with functioning arms that they could use to employ some weapon or another so I'd have to make even harder shots twice in a row again and have to content with incredibly important organs being right next to the impact zone. Now consider this: my own carry gun only has seven rounds. Given seven rounds to stop a problem, do you really want to take four really hard shots that might neutralize the threat and maybe won't be fatal? Now consider that even if I had something like a glock 17 with a hearty 18 rounds: just how many carefully aimed shots in that long magazine do you imagine you're actually going to get to take?
To make a very long point very simple: because of the failings of firearms and the human body you aim for the center because it gives you the best chance to hit something. Because of factors you cannot possibly predict, you must assume that shooting someone is going to be fatal. Because you want to stop a threat you view as sufficient cause to take a life, you must shoot for whatever you can hit that will efficiently resolve a threat.
But, me personally? The only thing I'm looking to do with a gun is get the hell out of a situation that requires me to have a gun.
