Welcome, nutter!
You've received some good food for thought, above. JDoe mentioned in Post #46, above, a place that sounds like a good resource in the Bay Area.
Gun fit matters tremendously.
{running edit: I see that wuluf has added another}
Whatever you select as your first gun, I encourage you to start looking at both .22 rifles and .22 handguns too, whether you buy one early on or not. Many of us, from new shooters to experts, spend many happy hours getting better as we put .22 bullets down range. Not having any .22s is like not having any coffee cups: it's not necessarily
wrong not to own them, but they're good to have around.
{old geezer voice}
Well, how do you think we got
to be experts?...(Hmph--kids these days)...Now get offa my yard!
{/old geezer voice}
Please mine the archives here; THR has an excellent Search function. If you click on "Search" at the top of the page, then choose "Advanced Search," you can look for threads by key words as well as by user name. You'll probably find some Members along the way whose posts you discover to be particularly informative.
There's a thread in the General Handguns sub-forum which you might find especially interesting. It's a collection, gathered by a Moderator, of several posts from the Member here who's been called "THR's Poet Laureate." That Member would disagree with that appellation himself, of course. Here's a link to it:
Do not just buy a handgun.. Thoughts of life the universe and all we hold dear.
{Edited to add: there's a lot of information in that thread, so you won't want to try to memorize it all; just get a sense of the main ideas that he's presenting}
Oh, and about the liberal/conservative thing: we've got a fair contingent of crusty old "social liberals" around here already. You won't be alone.
Again, Welcome.