On Mar 8, 7:42?am, "Keith" wrote:
Because the State of Florida requires that a boat be registered in
*some* state
to be used on Florida waterways, the watercop is simply doing his job
when he cites a boat that has no registration from any state.

The state of FL has no right to require other states to do anything.

Nor are they trying to make any other states do anything.

If you want to use a boat in Florida, the Florida law says it must be
registered in some state. If none of the other 49 states wanted to
register boats, Florida would not have the power to require them to do
so.

People who bring boats to Florida from states where there is no
registration of boats or where it is considered "optional" are
informed about the Florida law, let off with a warning, and told they
have 2-weeks to finish up their visit to Florida *or* apply for a
registration.

Yes, yes, yes, the guy is a jerk. No doubt. But charges that he is
ticketing people for operating "completely legal" do not appear to be
true. Completely legal in one state isn't always completely legal in
another.Example: for a long time, the drinking age in Idaho was 19
while it was 21 in Washington. If a cop caught a 19 year old kid
chugging a beer in a Washington State Park, the defense "but I'm a
resident of Idaho" wouldn't fly at all. Nobody gets a pass from
obeying the law in one state simply because the law in their home
state is different.

Heck, same with fish and game laws. If you can keep a limit of 20
Xfish in Georgia but the state limit is only 12 Xfish in Florida,
nobody would argue that they should be allowed to keep 20 Xfish while
in Florida because he or she was a legal resident of Georgia.