Every officer knows the gap. On one end there are verbal commands. On the other end there is a duty weapon. Most of what happens on patrol falls somewhere in the middle, and that middle ground is exactly where less lethal weapons in law enforcement do their work.
Lawmen Supply Company of New Jersey has been stocking that middle ground since 1984. We carry duty-ready OC spray and inert training canisters from SABRE, plus chemical agent rounds, impact munitions, distraction devices, smoke and signaling tools, and compatible launchers from Combined Systems, Inc. We sell to police departments, corrections facilities, sheriff’s offices and government agencies only. We are not a retail shop, and everything on this page is chosen with agency policy, training programs and procurement rules in mind.
Less than lethal weapons are tools built to stop a threat, gain compliance or control a crowd without applying deadly force. The name matters. They are called “less than lethal” rather than “non lethal” because no impact round, chemical agent or distraction device can ever be guaranteed harmless. Distance, placement, the subject’s health and the situation all change the outcome. Honest terminology protects officers in court and keeps expectations realistic during training.
These tools do not replace firearms. They sit between the officer and the trigger, and they give a patrol officer or tactical team more room to work with. A subject refusing to drop a knife, a barricaded individual in crisis, a demonstration that turns into a disturbance, and a cell extraction all call for different answers. An agency that carries only one less lethal option is really carrying no options at all.
That is the practical case for non lethal weapons in law enforcement. More choices mean more chances to end an encounter without anyone going to the hospital or the morgue.
The spending numbers back up what departments already feel on the street. The global non-lethal weapons market is expected to grow from $8.89 billion in 2025 to $9.65 billion in 2026, a compound annual growth rate of 8.6%. Less lethal ammunition on its own is a smaller but steady slice, moving from $1.11 billion in 2025 to roughly $1.17 billion in 2026, with North America the largest region.
Who is buying? Law enforcement accounted for about 64.9% of the non-lethal weapons market in 2025, with crowd control applications making up roughly 38.6% of revenue that year.
None of that growth is happening by accident. Use-of-force policies have tightened, civil liability exposure has climbed, and departments are being asked to show they tried something else first. Less than lethal weapons are how you show it.
Oleoresin capsicum and CS remain the workhorses of this category. OC is what most officers carry on the belt for close-range compliance. CS is the crowd management tool, deployed through grenades, projectiles and delivery systems built for area coverage. SABRE covers the patrol side with formulations that hold up in cold, heat and wind. Combined Systems handles the crowd control side with a full lineup of chemical agent munitions.
If your department is buying chemical agents, buy inert training versions at the same time. Officers who have never pulled a canister under stress will fumble it on the street.
For crowd management and civil disturbance response, agencies need crowd control equipment that is reliable under pressure and deployable at range. Combined Systems supplies impact munitions, smoke and signaling rounds, chemical agent projectiles, and distraction devices used by law enforcement agencies globally. Their products are the industry standard for this category.
Impact rounds let officers gain compliance from a distance. Baton rounds, sponge rounds and specialty projectiles are the most common types agencies stock. Combined Systems builds impact munitions used by departments and military units around the world, and the reason they show up in so many armories is consistency. A round that flies the same way every time is a round your instructors can teach around and your officers can trust at three in the morning.
Tactical entries, high-risk warrant service and hostage situations often turn on a few seconds of confusion. Distraction devices create that window with light and sound instead of injury. These are team tools, not patrol tools, and they demand documented training and a written deployment policy before they go into service.
Smoke rounds cover movement, mark positions and shape how a crowd moves through a space. They are one of the more underrated less lethal weapons in law enforcement because they solve problems without touching anybody. We stock multiple Combined Systems configurations for both tactical and public order use.
Munitions are useless without something to fire them. We carry launchers compatible with the CSI lineup in single and multi-shot configurations. If you are not sure which launcher pairs with the rounds your agency already has on the shelf, call us before you order. We would rather answer that question up front than process a return later.
SABRE duty aerosols and matching inert canisters give you a full cycle: carry, train, replace. Buying the trainer alongside the duty product is one of the cheapest risk-reduction moves a department can make.
In New Jersey this is not a suggestion. The Attorney General’s Use of Force Policy provides specific guidance on less-lethal force as an alternative to deadly force and as a de-escalation tool, and the Office maintains an Attorney General’s List of Approved Less Lethal Ammunition and Conducted Energy Devices, most recently revised in November 2024. Under that policy, less-lethal devices and ammunition are treated as mechanical force and may be used against a threatening assailant or active assailant, but never against a passive resistor. The policy itself was revised again in September 2025.
There is also a direct equipment mandate for tactical units. The revised policy on barricaded individuals requires tactical teams to be equipped with less lethal weapons, including conducted energy devices and impact munitions, because those tools frequently resolve incidents without deadly force. And accountability is built in. Officers must report force used against a civilian to a statewide Use of Force Portal within 24 hours, and all 500-plus New Jersey law enforcement agencies have been submitting to that portal since late 2020.
What this means for your purchasing officer is simple. Check the approved list before you write the requisition, not after. We deal with this on a weekly basis with agencies across New Jersey and the tri-state area, and we will tell you plainly if something you are considering is going to create a problem.
A pallet of impact munitions sitting in a locked cage does nothing for your department. The agencies that get real value out of less lethal weapons in law enforcement are the ones that train with them regularly, document that training, and write clear policy about when each tool comes out.
Build the training budget into the equipment budget from day one. Order inert trainers and marking rounds along with duty product. Run scenarios where officers have to pick between options under time pressure, because that decision is the hard part, not the trigger pull. If you are also running force-on-force scenarios, our Simunition line pairs well with less lethal training blocks, and plenty of the departments we work with schedule them together.
Start with your calls. A township with heavy patrol volume and few crowd events needs a different mix than a city agency that stages for demonstrations several times a year. Corrections has its own set of needs entirely, with close-quarters deployment and ventilation concerns that patrol never deals with.
Then look at what you already own. Launcher compatibility, expiration dates on chemical agents, and holster or carrier fit all limit what makes sense to add. Many departments discover during this step that half their stock is expired, which is a budget problem and a liability problem at the same time.
Finally, check the money. Grant cycles, county co-ops and trade-in credit all change what is realistically within reach this fiscal year. Our trade-in program lets agencies apply the value of aging firearms and equipment toward new purchases, which has helped a number of departments modernize without waiting for a full budget cycle.
We have worked exclusively with law enforcement for more than 40 years out of Lumberton, New Jersey. That is the whole business. No retail counter, no consumer catalog, no split attention. Over that time we have supplied state and local agencies across New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, New York and beyond.
Our team knows the Combined Systems and SABRE catalogs in detail, and just as importantly, we know how agency purchasing actually works. Quotes formatted for your finance office. Documentation your chief needs. Straight answers about lead times instead of optimistic guesses. Every quote request gets a response within 24 hours.
If your department is standing up a less lethal program from scratch, replacing expired stock, or trying to figure out what to do about a launcher nobody has ammunition for anymore, send us the details and we will work through it with you.
Less than lethal weapons are tools designed to control a subject, gain compliance or manage a crowd without applying deadly force. Common examples include OC and CS chemical agents, impact munitions such as baton and sponge rounds, distraction devices, smoke rounds and conducted energy devices. They are called "less than lethal" instead of "non lethal" because serious injury is always possible depending on distance, placement and the subject's condition.
The two terms describe the same category of equipment, but "less lethal" is the more accurate one and the term most agencies and policies now use. "Non lethal" suggests zero risk of death, which no impact round or chemical agent can promise. When you see non lethal weapons in law enforcement referenced in older policy documents or vendor catalogs, it generally means the same products we list on this page.
We stock the Combined Systems line, which covers chemical agent munitions, impact munitions, distraction devices, smoke and signaling rounds and compatible launchers. We also carry SABRE duty OC aerosols and matching inert training canisters. If you need something in this category that is not listed, ask, because our catalog is broader than what appears on the site.
No. New Jersey agencies must work within the Attorney General's Use of Force Policy, and less-lethal ammunition and conducted energy devices need to appear on the Attorney General's approved list. We check this with agencies before quoting so nobody spends budget on something that cannot be put into service.
Yes, and it is not optional in practice even where it is not spelled out in statute. Training is what makes deployment defensible after the fact. We recommend buying inert trainers alongside duty product and running scenario-based sessions where officers have to choose between force options under pressure.
Most chemical agent products carry a shelf life in the range of four to five years depending on manufacturer and formulation, and impact munitions have their own dating. Check the manufacturer marking on each lot rather than relying on memory. If your inventory has not been audited recently, that is usually the first thing we help a department sort out.
They are the primary tool for it. Crowd control made up roughly 38.6% of the non-lethal weapons market in 2025, and that reflects how heavily agencies rely on chemical agents, smoke and impact munitions for public order response. Effectiveness depends on having the right delivery system for the space, trained operators, and clear command direction on when deployment is authorized.
Fill out the quote request form on this page with your agency name, contact details and what you are looking for, or call us directly. Include your current launcher platforms if you have them, since that determines munition compatibility. We respond to every request within 24 hours during business days.
