I would probably recommend a handgun and or a shotgun. a rifle can obviously be good as well, but with CA law, you are pretty limited. hard to really recommend any specific guns without knowing you, but for a handgun, i dont think you could go wrong with a glock 19 or 23(9mm and .40s&w). For shotguns, Remington 870 or Mossburg 500 are pretty standard. I have found that there are way more indoor ranges that are pistol only in LA than outdoor where you can shoot rifles and shotguns, so depending on where you are, you may need to take that into consideration. as for actually buying one, you need to get a firearm safety certificate, which requires you pass a safety test (not hard, mostly common sense). you get them at the gun store and it costs about 25$. after that, find the one you want and buy it. if your current address is different than your ID, you will need to bring something to verify for your background check. different stores have different rules on that, but usually a utility bill works. In CA you can only buy one gun a month, but i think that doesn't apply to used guns
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