My experience with shooting 9x19 in a Smith revolver is a mixed bag.
Years ago, Tom the founder of TK Custom came to the ICORE regional, the Wheelgunner's Revenge at Niles, Michigan.
He saw my future wife, a sponsored USPSA Single Stack/Limited shooter, taking a dab into round guns, competing with my 6" 686 that I'd worked over for action pistol competition.
She was fine with the shooting part, of course, but without having put time into reloading she wasn't going to get into the top ten. And, given the amount of practice she devoted to Single Stack, the Comp IIIs weren't going to get the call.
Still, Tom saw potential and sponsored her with a new cylinder and a pile of his excellent 9x19/.38 Super moonclips plus a loader.
Basically, factory 9mm ammunition could not get anywhere near to making the power floor in USPSA, even in a six-inch barrel.
I made some moderate .38 Super loads with SnS 147s but she never did cotton to the whole thing.
I tried some souped-up .38 Supers that made Major power level. I hesitate to think of what the pressure may have been, but the stout 686 didn't seem to mind.
In the end, I got better scores with my .45 ACP revo, which is a lot faster to reload and rather milder to shoot compared to mid-level .357 magnum, so the outfit got put aside.
These days, the converted cylinder goes into the 4" 586 and gets fired mostly with .38 Super; I have quite a supply of the stuff from the USPSA days.
If ever I were to carry it, I'd consider the 9x23 Silvertips I have a small supply of. These 125s exit the blue gun at just over 1500fps. That's serious.
In general, though, getting full power out of the conversion is not usually the case.
In our training business, we did see a number of the Ruger LCR 9s, and many of them did have some crimp-jumping issues with ordinary factory FMJs. This often ties the gun up completely, so if it's a self-defense gun, this would need to verified.
Oddly, we have not seen one of these guns in a class in several years now.
To the point about 9x19 and .38 Special being more or less equal in effectiveness for self defense, or the .38 being less powerful, I'd say that only stands until some Buffalo Bore is located.
His 158gr SWC-HP comes smoking out of my 2" Detective Special at well over 900fps, and in some of my 4" guns comes close to 1100fps. That power level, combined with the highly-effective bullet design, puts just about any 9x19 on the trailer.
One more thing- the quality of the TK work and products is absolutely excellent and a joy to behold. Top notch.
