Canoe Licenses?

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According to Fur-Fish-Game magazine, Congress, at the urging of the Administration, is considering legislation that would require the licensing of all boaters, in the name of national security.

The president of BoatU.S., Nancy Michelman, is opposed to licensing. The magazine quotes her as saying, "Calls by Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Coast Guard officials that recreational boating would be safer if boaters were 'certified' and required to show proof of identification is just not backed up by the facts." And, "The rate of recreational boating fatalities per 100,000 boats has been cut by 75 percent and the number of boating fatalities has been reduced by 58 percent since ... 1971."

Read more here and here.

Instead, Michelman advocates boaters carry their driver's licenses or some other form of identification, just as airline passengers must. And, if the Coast Guard expanded the Waterway Watch program, there would be thousands of eyes patrolling our waters. She said, "Requiring millions of recreational boat owners to be licensed and tasking the already overburdened Coast Guard with implementing a duplicative system solely to identify those operating a boat will be costly to develop, take years to implement, and will not result in a demonstrable improvement in national security."

Some will say this only applies to motor boats or big sail boats but don't be sure. And don't be too quick to jump on the kiss-your-liberty-goodbye bandwagon without a lot of scientific evidence that more rules, more regulations, more taxes and more licenses will help something. If that were true we'd be living in Eden already.