PepperBall firms merge into giant red hot ammo producer

Two warring riot-gear companies have declared a truce and decided to merge their fire power, according to the Denver Business Journal.

Westminster-based Security With Advanced Technology (SWAT), which supplied crowd-control guns and ammunition to security forces during the Democratic National Convention, will join forces with California-based PepperBall, a manufacturer of crowd-control devices, which predictably specializes in making guns that fire balls filled with pepper irritants.

SWAT’s business had suffered in recent years as it became involved in patent litigation with competitor PepperBall and had trouble bringing “less-than-lethal projectile guns to market,” according to the business journal.