Hi Beacon, you can either buy new equipment or used at various swap meets called hamfests. I haven’t bought equipment in a while, so I don’t know the dealers of today. When I was younger there was this company called Heathkit that made the most phenomenal kits, where you really learned about radio electronics, and got a first rate product, as well. Unfortunately they are no longer around.
For general info on ham radio, the main national organization is called the American Radio Relay League. You can look up their site. They sponsor many of the contests, and put out a monthly journal called QST with many articles and with ads for both new and used equipment, and publish a ton of books from beginning to advanced. Some libraries carry the journal and some of their books.
I am reminded that Senator Barry Goldwater was a ham, as was King Hussein of Jordan (the father) and I knew a frum guy who spoke with him. In addition, on many of the space missions, NASA astronauts bring along a ham radio and speak to people. I seem to recall that they have arranged demos for kids where they would teach a class from space, and you could talk directly with them.
Some hams also are interested in low power communications where they build a small battery powered radio in a tuna can, and see how far they can get with it. It is still possible to go hundreds and even thousands of miles with very simple equipment. This is an advantage of Morse Code, since the equipment is simpler and uses less power, and is intelligible even when the signal is weak. Voice tends to be inaudible when it is not strong enough.
Other hams bounce signals off the moon, and have even built their own satellites in space. Many just use it to enjoy nice conversations without all the technical stuff. Unfortunately, the internet and cell phones have usurped that role, in some ways.
Many of the abbreviations that teens use on text messages which they think they invented have actually been around for 75 years and are standardized and listed in the ham manuals for saving time on morse code.