My vote would go towards a handgun, but as others have said, this is a choice you must make for yourself. Same goes towards *which* pistol.
Justin's recommendations on his link seem pretty good to me. My advice seconds his- try out a bunch o guns and pick the one you like best. Just make sure it is reliable and of sufficient power (IMO anything 'above' .380 is sufficient, though others out there are likely twitching after reading that.
).
One bit of advice is to consider heavily the revolver. Some benefits:
1. reliability. They rarely break. (yes yes yes, it does happen. Meteors fall out of the sky and hit people on the head, too. Life is full of risks)
2. capacity. 6 is plenty unless you are in the opening scenes of Red Dawn.
3. economy. In general a quality revolver costs less than a quality semi-auto. In general. Makarov enthusiasts will disagree loudly.
4. Simplicity. Point- click. Repeat as needed.
That last point cannot be stressed enough. When everything goes sideways the simplest tasks get hard and even things with the slightest bit of complexity get confusing. This is ESPECIALLY true if you do not train enough. Revolvers are the ultimate idiot gun. If you pull the trigger, it will go bang. No safeties, no magazines, no mag disconnects, etc etc etc. And they're easy to make safe, too. Pop the cylinder and dump.
If you think this point isn't important or true, watch a raw newbie with a revolver, and with a semi-auto. There is much less hair-raising fumbling with a revolver.
This should in no way be construed as advocating just buying a revolver and not training. I'm just saying that its a more forgiving weapon, IMO.
Ultimately, though? YOU gotta chose. Not me.
Mike