Generally speaking, rifle cartridges are faster than pistol cartridges. There is some overlap.

>Are pistol cartridges slower than rifle cartridges?
In general, yes.

>is it fair to say that pistols have shorter effective ranges than other weapons (low velocity, thus range)?
In general, yes. Compare the case sizes of a pistol cartridge versus a intermediate or full size rifle cartridge. Rifle cases are usually larger and hold a lot more powder. There are always exceptions, of course.

You are right, there are a ton of cartridges out there but for starters I would look at the most common pistol cartridges in wide use in the US, like the .22 LR (although commonly used in rifles as well), 9mm Luger, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP. Then look at the most common rifle cartridges in use in the US, like 5.56x45mm/.223 Remington and 7.62x51mm/.308 Winchester to start.

So as you can see, there's a lot of cartridges, because these three pictures don't have all the calibers.

The kicker is that there are rifles in what's generally considered "pistol" calibers and pistols in what is generally considered "rifle" calibers.

Before you get overwhelmed, please relax.

Most pistols use calibers that make the most of what little room they have in the grip. This puts some constraints on how much power you can get out of it in multiple ways. This means that most pistol calibers will be short and stout; regardless of your feelings on bottlenecked pistol calibers, the point is the majority isn't. Out of a handgun, it's often better to push a relatively large and heavy bullet relatively slowly for a few reasons.

You can put more power in a revolver without much trouble because you're not shoving rounds in the thing you wrap your hands around. As fun as big automags are like desert eagles and wildeys, they suffer from the "gripping a 2x4" affliction.

Things that were meant to go in rifles most of the time suffer few constraints and as a result can be all sorts of shapes and sizes.

Calibers and the firearms they go in really is a broad topic so this cursory overview is meant more to help you narrow your question if you want to know more.

  This is an old US Army training video on ballistics that might help shed some light on powder burn rate, pressure curve, barrel length, etc. A lot of it isn't relevant to your question but it helps explain why cartridges on the "pistol" end of the spectrum use smaller volumes of faster burning powder and shorter barrels and and cartridges on the "rifle" end of the spectrum use larger volumes of slower burning powder and longer barrels.

  >>107759
If you're interested in old time .mil training videos, archive.org has them all available as high quality downloads. you don't need to stream them, you can make a big collection and stash them with your anime so you have something neat to watch if the internet dies. http://www.zenoswarbirdvideos.com has a lot of the old aircraft training films organized.
>altitude is your wealth

>>107762
Just watched the P51 training video, good stuff.