In John Brunner’s prophetic dystopian novel, Stand on Zanzibar, we meet the “muckers” (from run amok); irrational killers who engage in widespread suicidal murder and mayhem for no apparent reason. Brunner suggests that information overload and breakdown of social and psychological norms due to overpopulation and pollution is responsible, although the exact mechanism is never made precisely clear. In the real world, after all, precise causation is rarely identifiable, even if the correlations are self-evident.

The muckers are certainly here, although it is hard to blame Brunner’s bogeymen. Today, they are just irrational, or motivated by political and religious reasons, or simply because naturally murderous populations (such as adolescents and criminals) now have improved access to firearms and indoctrination from computer media, films and games.

Brunner made another prediction. I don’t know if it was on “Zanzibar”, or one of its sequels, and I suspect its only a matter of time before it manifests itself in our own time.

In Brunner’s universe, crime and social unrest are rampant (over and above the muckers) and average citizens are arming themselves in an increasingly gun-friendly America. The criminal element responds by escalating with ever more lethal weapon systems. An armaments and security industry is only too happy to sell hardware–to both sides. (Sound familiar?)

But it’s America, and people with money can afford better weapons, and a better chance of survival. The poor are caught in the middle. They are also victims of the criminals, but they can’t afford the latest in firepower. The latest self-defense item is an armored suit equipped with automatic weaponry. It quickly becomes standard equipment for the well-outfitted man about town. But it is pricey.

Well-meaning liberals find this unacceptable, and propose bills in Congress to allow the poor access to these personal weapon systems, through government subsidies. The idea is to give the lower income classes the ability to write off, in whole or in part, the cost of purchasing these armored suits.Failure to allow this becomes synonymous with racial discrimination. The weapons industry, of course, welcomes this new development.

Before you scoff, recall that a few years ago there were a few rural municipalities in the US that actually required households to arm themselves in the expectation it would discourage crime. Whether this caught on or not, I don’t know, but it only takes a minor leap of the imagination to imagine providing financial aid to those families too destitute to purchase their own Family Atomics.

Unless you’re a John Brunner fan, remember: you heard it here first.