Thank you so much for this thoughtful reply @dollarandsense - you've added even more to contemplate with this response. If only I had greater voting power! I find insight and conversation such as this worth much more than the small change I can offer currently.

I'm going to throw a curly statement out there - it relates to rights. Now, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this notion, I'm merely putting it out there as a what if. You see, I struggle sometimes with the notions that the word rights elicits in me.

Personally, I see the word rights stemming from the word entitlement, and once we feel we are entitled to something, it brings about all sorts of misinformation and problems. Your firearm debate example highlights this (which by the way, I don't mind you bringing to the table in this thread. It's a difficult debate, one I'm glad Australia sorted out years ago!). The coworker your Dad had the argument with believes he is entitled (because he has a right) to own an assault rifle, but what actually makes him entitled to this? And while I'm sure your Dad's coworker would argue that the government has said he does, we can then extrapolate this out to, well, what gives the government the 'right' to grant this to him, and so on and so forth (probably quite philosophical actually - what came first, the chicken or the egg?!).

To get back the the curly statement I mentioned earlier, let me pose it as a question: What if we don't actually have a right to anything?

Now, please don't misinterpret this. I'm not arguing that you're wrong - far from it. I'm just playing devil's advocate and throwing something different into the ring. What if we're not entitled to healthcare, firearms, or any other item we come into possession of? What if it's just that we're lucky enough to live in countries that can offer opportunities that we now take for granted? Like you said in your post - I'm not sure where I fall on whether we actually have the right to something or not. Maybe rights are determined by where one lives as opposed to anything else. I guess someone who is seriously ill and had never received medical treatment before would just be super pleased to finally get some - right or not.

Long story short, if we were to settle on rights existing (because in reality they do), and we were to determine education as a right, then I guess it would be an inherent one. But then that summation is only really as true as the circumstances you are born into. Many children born into poverty or under the rule of tyrannical governments probably don't automatically have the right to education, inherent or granted.

Difficult to answer, @dollarsandsense. Thought provoking, but not easy to answer.