The best answer to that is a quote from Terry Pratchett, from the Author's Note to his book, "I Shall Wear Midnight" (the Tiffany Aching series is highly recommended, as are all his books).

"It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going.  And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong."

Thanks to years of poor history teachers, I grew up thinking that history was boring and stupid.  Silly, really, when I also loved the stories of my grandparents - which was real history, unlike the dried-and-desiccated leftovers in the textbooks.  

History really is fascinating -- as well as terribly useful.  Much of what we deplore (left and right!) in this country today is a result of our ignorance of our own history and our Constitution.  

Read them.  Study them.  Study particularly the REASONS behind the choices the Framers made when they wrote the document, and how they arrived at their choices.  It is astounding.  

Try Googling or BING searching this phrase: "Why Capitalism is better than Communism" and see what comes up in your search. Page after page of the opposite including, but not limited to, college "essays" with titles like: "Communism is better than Capitalism."  I read that one. Or, I should say, LABORED through that one. MADNESS!!!! The degree of ineptitude, misguidance, blatant indoctrination is more than overwhelming. It's staggering. This young mind who wrote that piece (of trash) endeavors to paint a bright and rosy picture of how "everyone is equal in Communism" and how "even surgeons are equal to peasants" because "the government runs everything" so there is no "evil competition" and what this young mind omits is that there is competition. You know who competes in Communism? Those who wish to run the government of a Communist nation. You want to talk about "evil competition" do you? Sure, there are "elections" in Communist nations but you go to North Korea and try to start a new party of the people, by the people and for the people and declare your candidacy and you will feel the point of "evil competition" speared right through your heart, my friend. 

Can't happen here though, right? I'm just a "crazy and insane rightwing nutjob" for thinking Communists are in our schools, government and media, aren't I? If I were at the port where the Titanic departed for the U.S.A. in England in 1912 and I told people "hey, that ship is capable of sinking, you know, right?" what would have happened to me? Clubbed, bagged, tossed in to the drink and four blokes would have been off to the pub to toss back a few pints giggling at the "crazy and insane nutjob" I was for making such a statement. Who would have had the real hangover? 

Capitalism is not perfect. It's flawed. ALL THINGS ARE. That's why the United States Constitution was written in the first place. People...human beings... are flawed, and we make mistakes, become greedy, and become power hungry. Hence the document that ensures three branches of government -- so that no one branch can become more powerful than the other -- created by a compact of the states and people as the final arbiters of THEIR creation. Or, so we thought. I don't believe the Founding Fathers and Framers of the Constitution ever envisioned a spineless Congress, a President who cries "racism" or "war on women" or "evil 1%" whenever a legitimate criticism of administration failures is voiced. I don't believe they envisioned a court system stacked with idealogues and activist judges. I don't believe they envisioned a media system that either blatantly lies, or blatantly omits the truth. 

We have automobiles, technology, the very device you are reading this post on, space travel, deep ocean exploration, air planes, medical devices and medicines, and so very much more because of two things: the United States Constitution and free market capitalism. Period. What are the cornerstones of our freedom and our free Constitutional Republic,  whereby we elect our neighbors and friends to enact new laws that spring from common sense justice and necessity, or REPEAL unjust laws that spring from CRONYISM, or (even worse) unjust laws that spring from hatred of our way of life and a desire to "fundamentally transform it" into something it's not? (Hmmm; where did I hear that before?)? There are two cornerstones to our freedom and way of life: God and family. 

I love this nation. Many have given their lives for it on the battle field. Others have given their lives for it sitting in their office not suspecting a plane would crash into them. Still some more gave their lives or limbs attending a marathon not suspecting those who used their tax dollars would build pressure cooker bombs to pay them back with not a "thank you" but an "allahu akbar" stab in the back. And it's not just we Americans under attack. Israel, Jerusalem, many other western civilizations are also being attacked, murdered, and maligned with smears and falsehoods and it gets even worse (see a DAILY log of world-wide atrocities at "thereligionofpeace.com"). Ever see the birth rates of Americans, or Europeans compared to Muslims? YouTube that right now and if your jaw doesn't drop you weren't paying attention. Muslims and Marxists, joined at the hip, and if "crazy, insane, nutjobs" like myself and many millions more are not successful in defeating them then the "evil competition" they engage in will not produce a better product we have all come to rely upon for necessity, and they will not compete in peace for your vote to represent you and your interests in a governing body built by God and family but they will ram you, rip out your sides, and you will find yourself deeply under the same pressure that the Titanic now silently reaps on the bottom of the ocean floor. 

I hope and pray I am just a "crazy, insane nutjob." From the bottom of my heart. I really do.

"I just don't like guns," she said.  This was in response to a comment I made about a rifle match I had participated in last week.

But what does this comment actually MEAN?  

"I just don't like fireplace pokers."   "I just don't like hammers."  "I just don't like cars."  "I just don't like bathtubs."  

None of these sentences make any sense whatsoever, and a person who made those statements would receive, at the very least, blank looks of astonishment.   Yet each of the named items is responsible, each year, for far more accidental and intentional deaths -- both in raw numbers and in per-capita numbers -- than firearms.  

The misconception -- a result of a LONG campaign to impugn firearms -- runs so deep we don't even see it any longer.  A gun is a piece of metal, or metal-and-plastic, with NO WILL OF ITS OWN.  

Does she not like freedom?  --We owe our freedom to guns.  The muskets and rifles of the Revolutionary War; the rifles of the Civil War and the Spanish-American War; the Tommy Guns of World War I; the more sophisticated rifles of World War II, Korea, Vietnam... would she have preferred we remain subjects of King George?  Have been overrun by Hitler's troops?  Successfully invaded by Imperial Japan?  

Does she not like public safety?  --The police, National Guard, Border Patrol, and state militias (yes, they still exist), and other groups, are all armed.  Should a police officer have to try to arrest a drug dealer with only a stern countenance as his protection?  Don't be absurd!

No.  The actual indication and actual implication here is that firearms do not belong in the hands of law-abiding citizens.  This could NOT be more wrong.  History shows us, time and again, that when the methods of self-defense are ONLY in the hands of government agents, the inevitable result is INCREASED public violence and murder -- far too often at the hands of the government itself.  

Please see the video "Innocents Betrayed" by the organization Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership -- it is available free on YouTube.  Here is one link:  
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Ownership of firearms is an essential support of our inherent and unalienable right to life:  what right can you have to your own life without the right, the power, and the duty to protect that life from those who would steal it from you with violence?

A dislike of "guns" -- as though they were independently-willed entities -- is just silly on the face of it.  

"War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory.  I love only that which they defend..."  (LOTR; The Two Towers)