Without clear and compelling reason, I believe that all publicly owned roads.....should be open to all.
Even to unlicensed, underexperienced, underage people with little to no training or oversight?
Bad divers may detract from some of diving's pleasures but rarely, if ever, present a serious danger to other divers.
Do you not think the recovery divers were placed in any danger? How about all the people that [-]lost[/-] risked their lives trying to search for Ben McDaniels? Were they not endangered by a diver? How about the panicked cavern diver that tried dragging me out during during deco (simulated, but they didn't know that)? How about the cavern divers running reels that intersected my reel NINE times between OW and gold line? How about the divers silting up the exit while another diver is exiting Eagle's Nest?
The other big thing: What about all of the dive sites closed because an irresponsible diver got himself killed? That doesn't endanger divers, but endangers divING. We're self-policing as a hobby, and I want NO government interfering with what I'm doing....so I don't want those morons closing up MY dive sites because they're too dumb to get proper training. We're lucky EN is still open.
The WORST part? Getting himself killed was bad enough, but getting his SON killed is inexcusable. THAT is a bad diver being a hazard to other people.
But, if you really think that diving licenses (government issued and managed) are the way to go, then throw your vote in for its support
That's
reductio ad absurdum and/or the Slippery Slope Fallacy, as defined in EVERY book. There's a middle ground between, "Screw it....let EVERYBODY go to 233ft way back in a cave with multiple tanks, all on air, unsupervised with zero training" and "I want 250 government checkpoints making sure every piece of my gear meets the regulations of 100's of non-diving bureaucrats." Maybe dive agencies should pull certs from people that condoned the action. Maybe not. I'm opposed to the GOVERNMENT getting involved, but would be behind some self-policing policy that keeps people from condoning it. I'm also okay with people killing themselves if they're too dumb to make the right decisions (Darwin is getting wronger and wronger by the day, and nanny-states are at fault).....but not if it means government stepping in and infringing upon MY rights as a responsible diver.
As has been said, these two would've still found a way to kill themselves....I just wish there was enough INTERNAL policing to keep cries for Government intervention out of it.