Subject: Re: Here's one for the ATHEIST board
Except that morality is a fuzzy concept. It is completely relative. Those who speak of morals usually (though not always) do it in reference to some religious tome.

It is my opinion that slavery is wrong. Enough people agree with me that it is illegal in most countries. But I can't actually reference anything "higher" to justify that. It's a shared opinion that was enacted into law.

I understand Harris' argument about "human well-being", but that also is an opinion. A postulate. I'm OK with that since quantum mechanics is based on three (unprovable) postulates. We want to maximize human well-being, so how do we do that. You can then argue against many things (like discrimination and slavery), and argue for many things (like healthcare, clean water, due process, etc). Given any moral framework, be it Harris' or some other, you will find laws that contradict it, and laws that coincide with it. So, yes, something can be moral but illegal, or vice-versa. But that framework is still arbitrary. It must be postulated, and then -like QM- it either works or it doesn't. QM seems to work on everything except gravity, so we keep that one.

To try to keep nominally on the point I was trying to make, though, it's pretty clear that the "right" to gun ownership is not a fundamental or natural or universal human right. Some rights are simply decisions made by one society to resolve a particular issue in one way or another - such as our right to be free from quartered troops. At most (and it is disputed) we have chosen to adopt for ourselves a guarantee of the ability to own firearms. But contrary to Dope1's assertion, that is neither a fundamental or natural right.

That I agree with. It can in no way be considered "innate" or "fundamental". It was a shared opinion that made it into the Constitution.