WSAQ296

So you imagine a scenario like this? : Dirtbag "I got my gmrs radio on, let's do us some listenin!" You: Okay honey, lets stop at the next rest area, WABC123 Dirtbag "That's it, we have his address, let's drive 300 miles and hope his house is empty and unsecure" Yeah, I think you're worrying about the wrong stuff. Much more likely to have a neighbor kid break in when he sees you driving away all loaded up on what's normally a day off.

They are effectively the same radio. Depending on how you order depends on the antenna(s) shipped with the unit. Upon powering up, there's a sequence of buttons that can be pressed to change it from gmrs to ham or 'normal' (open to all). I leave mine gmrs, as the whole point is to be able to hand a channelized radio to someone for use, not to accidentally have them dial up some unknown freq.

Late to the party on this, but if you haven't tuned the GP9 for GMRS, it's not going to perform optimally. It's usually a 2m/440 antenna and at 20mhz above 440 it's not optimal.