Our hobby of experimentation and public service is being sought by seditionists as a place to coordinate. Don't give them a home here. Our own freedom to build and the trust we've been granted by the FCC is at stake.

In several forums, I have seen ham radio mentioned as a place to take conversations that result in bans from social media sites. It's false that those bans are a result of speaking about conservative topics - unless the topic is glorifying or planning violence, calls to arms, harassment of others, or spreading hate.

We are a unique hobby, granted a unique privilege and trusted to use our own judgement and skills when we build and operate radio transmitters. That trust means many transmitters available to hams are frequency agile and can be tweaked to operate out of band. It also means that we are trusted not to use encryption features of radios that are designed for the commercial bands.

This trust, and the privileges that result from it, are at stake if Ham Radio becomes seen by the FCC as a place where pirates gain equipment that lets them operate illegally or that lets terrorists plan and execute their operations.

The cat-and-mouse game in the CB world led the FCC to push regulations all the way up to the silicon manufacturers - who were forced to produce single-purpose frequency-locked chipsets, and mandated the removal of 10/12/15m bands from many Amateur amplifiers due to abuse outside the ham bands.

If you want us to continue to hold this trust - be careful giving comfort and aid to people who have no interest in gaining a license so they can learn how to build a transmitter or provide public service, but instead seek to setup "tactical comms" or "prep" or who need to know how to obtain/setup/use a radio with their friends "today" but will get a license "one day".

There are 650k amateurs - our numbers are swamped by truckers, boaters, hunters, airsofters, preppers, and militia kooks. Once that genie is out of the bottle and it's common in those groups to obtain and operate a ham radio with no real regard to its intended purpose, we can't put it back in, and you can be sure the FCC will be motivated to control the construction and distribution of amateur transceivers.

Don't let me get proven right - self-policing and self-regulation must mean something in a hobby like ours.