If you love the outdoors CA is great.
If you love guns CA sucks.

I love the outdoors more than guns, but guns is next on the list, so CA isn't my first choice. I would say of all the places I've lived and visited though that CA is pretty high on the outdoors list.

I can't speak from true experience, but I'd imagine .40 vs .45 as far is accuracy isn't much of a difference given the shooter is capable. And if you are talking personal protection it's even less of an issue since most personal protection issues are at ranges less than 20 feet (from what I've heard..) Thankfully I don't know that for a fact.