Hey ralphie, there is a thread about buying your first handgun that is a good start. I've read through them and it's got a lot of good info. I'd check out those threads and ask a more specialized question afterwards (like I'm looking at going cc more than having a larger pistol, 9mm vs 45, crap like that).
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...n-threads.html is collection of all the first time handgun threads.
Hope it helps.