Jean Lefebvre’s CARPLAST came before the polyethylene shotshell of the shooter Ronald Comerfort (1958), and well before the mass distribution of the plastic shotshells introduced by Remington (1961) and Winchester (1965), marking the Lefebvre family name in the annals of firearms history and solving the issues tied to the costs of metal shotshells and sensitivity to water and humid conditions of waxed cardboard shells.

Most importantly, CARPLAST allowed the Lefebvres to master the science of plastic product manufacturing, which would have been seminal for the future of the family business.

The first important foray of the Lefebvre family in the law enforcement equipment business came in 1979, when GIGN – the special tactics unit of the French National Gendarmerie – approached them to request a rubber baton ammunition to be used for crowd control and less-lethal takedown of suspects, similar to what the British military had invented and had been using for a decade in Northern Ireland.

But the French operators wanted the ammunition to be used on 12-gauge shotguns instead of 37mm launchers, making them smaller and thus less likely to cause collateral damages.

The result was the 12/50 SAPL, a 12-gauge shotshell with a shorter hull and propellant charge, loaded with a single round rubber baton or five smaller rubber pellets. Dubbed the GOMM-COGNE. Those rubber bullets would later be used by the company to load 67 mm or 70 mm (2.¾”) 12-gauge shotshells for higher range and better effect.

The GOMM-COGNE rubber shotshells are still manufactured by SAPL today and are issued to police and military forces in France and fifty other Countries worldwide for crowd control and non-lethal takedowns, and are available on many civilian markets as a low-cost non-lethal home defense solution.

For the 12/50 GOMM-COGNE ammunition, many years ago SAPL developed with Chiappa (which produces them) a series of single or double shot, manual loading break-open "traumatic pistols". Dubbed the GC 27 and GC 54, they’re well known in Europe, they’re available for purchase and ownership without a license in some Countries (France included), and they can also be used for target shooting practices where the use of real ammunition would be dangerous or unpractical – eg. in one’s own backyard.

For this specific use, SAPL offers the Soft-Gomm six-shots revolver and its 8.8x10 SAPL round, similar to a slightly larger 6mm Flobert shell with a rubber bullet, offering very low levels of muzzle energy (4.5 J) that make it perfect for the modern version of the short-range indoor target shooting practiced in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Established as SAPL proper in 1983 by Jean Lefebvre’s son Jean-Pascal, the company launched its line of riot control polycarbonate shields in 1993, updated in 2016 with the launch of a high-resistance mirror-effect version, all of which are in service with the law enforcement and military forces in France and abroad. In 1995, SAPL first introduced the DBD/95 riot control flashbang, once again used in France and abroad.

Emilie Lefebvre, the niece of Jean Lefebvre, assumed the position of CEO for SAPL in 2016; by that time, the company was already offering a broad line of OC (pepper) and CS (tear gas) sprays for law enforcement as well as their own decontamination spray to soothe the effects of the above on officers and suspects.

At the same time, SAPL expanded its line of shotgun shells to include signal, blank, and tear gas cartridges, as well as aluminum slug shells and armor piercing shells to be used against barricades, reinforced doors, and engine blocks.

Always mindful of its origins as a gunsmithing atelier, under Emilie Lefebvre’s leadership SAPL launched the Custom-Silence Adamantium .22 Long Rifle bolt-action rifle in 2020, built around a CZ 457 action and featuring an integrally silenced, carbon-wrapped barrel of SAPL’s own design; the company would launch a line of rimfire carbon-wrapped sound suppressors in 2021, and later a version of its own silencer design for centerfire hunting rifles, up to and including .30 caliber.