This is a ressurection of a 2009 thread, but I will provide a little information. For many years, S&W was apparently horrified by the thought of firing jacketed bullets in their revolvers due to increased barrel wear (of course, there were very few jacketed bullet revolver cartridges available in those days, so there probably wasn't much to worry about). The hot cartridges of the pre-WWII area (the .38-44 and the .357 Magnum) early on did not use full jacketed bullets, but rather metal capped bullets. This was because S&W felt that the bullet bearing surface in the bore should remain lead to preserve barrel life.

During WWII, the use of the .38 Special revolver for military purposes came to pass, and of course, FMJ bullets were a requirement for compliance with the Hague Convention for non-expanding bullet use in combat. So both the British Commonwealth and the US military ordered that military handgun ammunition use FMJ bullets. As a result, in early 1942 S&W changed the steel alloy used for Victory barrels from AISI 1025 to AISI 1045, as the latter was more wear resistant. So I suppose S&W thought it was an important step to take to maintain long barrel life.

I have to assume that modern barrel steels make modern handgun barrels largely immune to wear from jacketed bullets. For sure (because I have personal knowledge) there are many military M9 pistols which have fired hundreds of thousands of FMJ M882 rounds through them in training, with no barrel changes in all that time. Early M9 barrels did have some problems, but they did not involve barrel wear.