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"I'm a farm boy. It's very interesting; you can detect self-starting characteristics in this society and they are strongest among people who have had some kind of rural upbringing and a very impressionable stage."
- Frank Herbert

Chunker  
  A device that fires small cubes of rubber; a non-lethal form of riot control.  

William Gibson's characters inhabit worlds in which there always seems to be a potential for violence.

The chunkers weren't even guns, not legally anyway, but a ten-second burst at close range would chew somebody's face off. They were Israeli riot-control devices, air-powered, that fired one-inch cubes of recycled rubber. They looked like the result of a forced union between a bullpup assault rifle and an industrial staple gun, except they were made out of this bright yellow plastic. When you pulled the trigger, those chunks came out in a solid stream.
Technovelgy from Virtual Light, by William Gibson.
Published by Bantam in 1993
Additional resources -

This is just the sort of weapon that could protect a client, but would be unlikely to result in the death of a client or the client's property.

Research is underway to produce weapons that would give military or police forces a non-lethal choice. Weapon types include antitraction materials (for example, making a sidewalk or street too slippery to walk on). Or (speaking of Spiderman) the WebShot, a 10-ft.-diameter Kevlar net. The net is packed into a projectile and fired from a special shotgun, snaring targets up to 30 feet away.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Virtual Light
  More Ideas and Technology by William Gibson
  Tech news articles related to Virtual Light
  Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson

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