It was like being in the center of a tornado, surrounded by a hurricane.

I couldn't sell anything, and the guys with 5-10 tables, at $70 each, got hosed.   No crowds to speak of, often there were more sellers than buyers, and the only guys talking to me were the sleazy lowballers, trying to get stuff so cheap they could resell it later.   Had a new Leatherman, paid $50 for it, asking $20,  only nibble was some clown demanding I sell it for $5.    Had some guy, after chiseling me down to a low ball price, demand I drop it another dollar.   I refused, he walked.

The guy with ten tables said he hadn't even sold $100 worth of stuff, and he was dropping prices on guns to below his wholesale cost.   Said he'd been selling at shows for 35 years, and this was the worst he'd ever seen.   His gas and hotel was another $500.

Wish I had some money to spend, cause the guy next to me was desperate, trying to sell me a NIB leopold 4-9x scope for $150, and a lot of other nice stuff at extremely low prices.

Cash was an absolute KING on Sunday afternoon.

Not sure why this was such a disaster, maybe the Rocky Mountain show three weeks earlier sucked up everyones cash.  

It was so bad I didn't do a "gun show report".

Hhmm? Should have gone, I guess.

It was pretty bad.

GAU 5-A-A.  I didn't go.  Guess I should have it all those bargains were there.  BTW, being retired AF, I like your handle:

Nice picture.

Mine was identical to that except it had a 14" pencil barrel, an A1 flash hider, bayo lug and happy switch.   The CATM guys were building GAUs from spare parts, some were horrible but I finally got one that was a lightweight tack driver.   Great handling rifle, always shot expert with it.   In my job, I beat it like a rented mule, even dropped it 40 ft from a tree once but it still held zero.    We would use our issued guns on field exercises with blanks and MILES gear and really abuse them.  Lots of scratches and dents but no function problems.   The aluminum stock held up well.    Had a lot of confidence in that gun.

So you didn't have the moderator that was on the earlier versions.  I think the AF took them off one ATF decided they were silencers!  This one has a pencil barrer but it's 1/7 ratio as I decided to upgrade to a more modern barrel (which I think the AF did as well).

Oh, yeah, the upper was really for the GAU-5 which had the bayo lug removed!  Also, if you look closely, I changed out the selector to one that can shoot nearly FA is you work it right!  I liked the look of the original one but since I can't afford a FA, I have to make do.

And if you were shooting the GAU-5/A/A, I assume you must have been an SP.

We had about 400 SPS gun toting troops, each with an assigned rifle.   Most were M-16A1s but about 25 were GAU-5,  GAU-5A, and GAU-5AA.    This was late 1980s/1990 with budget cuts rampant and not even money for toilet paper in the latrines.   The CATM guys were scrounging parts from any source they could find, including Army rejects from Vietnam.    We were still using S&W .38 revolvers.   Almost every GAU was a different configuration, some so worn the receivers were 90% bare aluminum.   They kept the 6” moderators on the really short barrel rifles to cut down the muzzle flash.   We had a number of different qualification courses, including a night one.   My first GAU had an extremely short barrel and A1 hider, and after a few rounds my night vision was so deteriorated from the fireballs I couldn't even see my target.   The small size was a big advantage, especially for me, getting in/out of a vehicle 10-15 times a shift, and it helped when trying to sneak up on the troops to spring a surprise exercise.

I don't think CATM cared what the ATF thought.   They were all full auto guns and we were SAC during the cold war.   Use of force/deadly force rules were pretty broad.    Any incident with a “priority-A resource” was justification for deadly force.   We didn't allow anyone to screw with us and we routinely screwed with every govt agency that tried.   We wouldn't Fed LE on the base without good reason and had an armed escort that followed them.     If they were FBI and violated our rules, they got jacked up same as everyone else.  

I carried my GAU slung behind my back, muzzle down, and it was small enough that the only part people in front of me saw was the sling, which they didn't see as threatening.   Some of them got quite a surprise when I whipped it around and suddenly there was a compact machine gun pointed in their direction.   I developed a quick-draw technique to reach behind with my right hand, grab the pistol grip, and swing it out in front pointing at the bad guy in one second.     I'd sometimes get called to the main gate because some asshole O-5 wanted to give my A1C some crap.   Those times I'd flaunt the weapon, and I carried two sets of exposed handcuffs on the front of my web gear.    Instant attitude adjustment.   We had a reporter trying to film bombers from the perimeter fence.   I pulled up in my Blazer, whipped out the GAU, and watched him race back to his car and spin the tires trying to leave.   As a 1LT, I could walk into Wing BattleStaff during an ORI, full of O-5s and O-6s, lay my rifle on the table, and instantly be treated with courtesy and respect.   They would share stories and laugh about all the other colonels they fucked with.

Despite us being short on quality weapons, there were four big piles of discarded weapons and ammo buried on the base.   After a few years, the topsoil eroded away enough to show barrels sticking out.   I poked through one and found lots of greasegun and M-1 carbine parts and ammo.   Mags that were still in their wrappers, tons of .45 ammo.   Stuff from WW2 and Korea.   The cheapest way to get rid of it was to dump it, same as massive amounts of hazardous waste all over the base.

Hey, don't diss that .38.  I qualified on that quite a few times since I entered AD in 1970.  But I found that you had to try to carefully pick out one that was in better shape than the rest since they all didn't shoot straight! I sometimes had to figure out which way it was shooting off line and compensate in order to qualify.  Maybe we should start a GAU-5 thread on our NM hometown website and see how many people out there are interested in this very fun little rifle.  Sounds like you had some good times with yours.  And yes, I was assigned to 8th AF once so I know how our use-of-force rules applied around strategic resources.