A revolver makes a lot of sense to me if it's your first handgun and it's for home protection. They're reliable and you don't have to remember to take them out and do maintenance on them at regular intervals, you only need to clean a revolver after firing it.
Another smart home protection idea is these great little rounds that are basically shotgun shells for a handgun. I forget the name of them but they have them at the shooting range I go to and that's a pretty small operation so they should be easy to find. They won't put anyone down unless maybe you hit them in the face, but the idea is to load your first two or so chambers with them. If someone breaks in your house at night, you alarm's going of, it's dark, you're groggy, you're probably not going to be able to roll out of bed and put one between the guy's eyes. But if you've got a couple of those shotgun style rounds you can fire them off in his direction (don't quote me but i think the spread is somewhere around a 4 foot radius at 14 feet). This greatly increases the chances that one of your first shots will find the mark, plus you've made your assailant think maybe he picked the wrong house, and you've got just that much more time to draw a bead for the real thing. Hell, if it's for home protection but you're afraid of going to jail for killing an attacker who only had a knife or bat or whatever, load up all six chambers with those rounds. Even if you hit the guy with all six, chances are he's no where close to mortally wounded, but he'll be so docile you can reload before calling 911
