While there's no shortage of BS handed out as advice in many gunshops, I don't think that it was the case in the described encounter.
It doesn't really matter what Bob Munden or "tlhelmer" can do with a snubbie at 50 yards. For most users, the short sight radius and overall smallness of the piece will preclude getting good hits at longer ranges. Given that snubbies are typically used as defense pistols, that cited "15 yards" is probably three times the distance within which the pistol would be needed. No one is going to try to attack her from half a football field away.
Whatever advice led her to purchase a "ported" pistol for defensive use is MUCH worse advice than anything the gun shop reportedly told her. A defensive pistol may likely need to be fired from a close-in retention position. The blast, bullet shavings, and unburnt powder that exhaust from the ports can blind or otherwise injure the user. If anyone doubts this, they need to speak with the cop who had to have a piece of jacket metal, that came from his Glock 17C during qualifications, removed from his nose.
As to using .357's in snubbies thus chambered; the issue of controlability is an individual one. However, one should not be tempted to trade multiple-shot controlability for a mostly illusory increase in power. For all its flash and blast, the .357 isn't buying the user much, over the better .38 loads, in a short barrel.
Anyone who can hold and squeeze can shoot any pistol and hit in slow, deliberate shooting. Slow and deliberate shooting, while fun, has little application in self-defense. There, speed and coarse (but adequate) accuracy will keep one alive. The potential stopping power of a round that never gets fired, due to slowness, is only hypothetical.
Rosco
