Good ay Grissom,
first of all no matter what you do you will need to learn how to program , access uses many vba subroutines (visual basic) and it doesnt matter what modern programming language you use they mostly use the same type of visual interface for forms(VB , VC ,Delphi ) and so on. For a beginer access is fairly easy to start with but you will have to get some fundermentals of the language.
secondly for access to be deployed as a stand alone you will need to get the MS Office Developer Suite . look at the following thread to see the answers given there
http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread188646.html
good luck
southoz