And then I realized this is exactly the same thing gun enthusiasts thought when they though Obama would limit their guns/bullets, and stocked up on them, and I thought it was silly. I guess we're a lot more similar than I would have thought, made me think a little bit more about it. I'm reminded a bit of that "first they came for me" poem/story.
The people I know are happy they did.
I can imagine being pretty happy in a year or two having stocked up on SDR gear. :-)
I finally had to start going to Walmart every morning before work to figure out which day the shelves got stocked. A couple of Tuesday morning visits later I had made my own little contribution to the problem by building my own hoard of bullets that I didn't really want just because I wanted to be able to go to the range once in a while without paying range prices for ammo...
Hoarders suck.
The FCC thing is based on actual information, not the fevered mind of deranged anti-Obama conspiracy theorists.
I haven't yet met any of the stereotypical deranged gun owners that I keep hearing about. Although I'm not a gun owner myself, I have visited ranges and gun shops throughout the US and all the "gun people" I've met have been peaceful, helpful, open-minded, and friendly.
And FWIW, you don't need to subscribe to a "deranged anti-Obama conspiracy theory"; the market mostly moved (quite rationally) after the Obama administration announced support for the so-called UN Treaty on Trade in Small Arms. The conference concluded without adoption of a treaty, but US support has made it more likely, and passage may well mean decreased availability of small arms and ammunition.
This only impacts an OEM/importer's ability to gain FCC approval/certification for new devices.
If you're not slapping FCC stickers on things, or are using something that never had an FCC sticker on it in the first place, this doesn't impact such apparatus (you always needed a separate license to operate HackRF & friends).
The cheap ones aren't even that. They're repurposed/upcycled television DTV receivers.
And, interestingly, many satellite receivers allow users to just enter a frequency in the supported range and they will happily load and display the data on that frequency.