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"[Science fiction] is the one literary medium left in which we have a free hand. We can do any damn thing we please."
- Alfred Bester

Loogie Gun  
  A non-violent weapon that shoots a gooey mass to immobilize a person judged to have criminal or violent intent.  

Sounds disgusting, but this is exactly what we need. Rubber bullets can actually kill people, as have tasers (discharging high voltage electricity into people via small darts). Bring on the loogie gun!

Both metacops, under their glossy black helmets and night vision goggles, are grinning. The one getting out of the mobile unit is carrying a short range chemical restraint projector - a loogie gun. Their plan worked. The loogie, when expanded in the air, was about the size of a football. Miles and miles of tiny cables like spaghetti with sticky gooey stuff that stays liquid until the loogie gun is fired. The snotty, fibrous drops of stuff wrapped all the way around her arm and forearm, lashed to the bar of the gates.
Technovelgy from Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson.
Published by Bantam in 1992
Additional resources -

The disgusting part is an additional disincentive for lawbreakers. This also reminds me in some ways of being slimed - like in Ghostbusters.

For some discussion on the subject of non-violent weapons, see the entry for chunkers from William Gibson's 1993 novel Virtual Light.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Snow Crash
  More Ideas and Technology by Neal Stephenson
  Tech news articles related to Snow Crash
  Tech news articles related to works by Neal Stephenson

Loogie Gun-related news articles:
  - VLe Provides Non-Lethal Response
  - 'Loogie Gun' Deployed On Pennsylvania Turnpike

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