For these youngsters, abstract rivalries take on mortal meaning. He said he had always carried a gun on the street. While the Little Rock gangs identify earnestly with big-city gangs, organizational ties between cities are often loose if they exist at all, Mr. Stodola said. A Los Angeles Blood may move to Little Rock or come for the summer, sent to stay with relatives by parents who thought they were removing him from trouble, only to form a new group here. But in some cases, Mr. Stodola said, the big-city gangs use local affiliates as distributors for crack, which sells here for twice what it does in Los Angeles.
Many gangs prohibit their own members from using crack.
Guns are widely owned in Arkansas, and gang members say they have little trouble getting them. Gangs have obtained whole caches at once by crashing cars into pawn shops. Boys who will kill without remorse use the word love to describe their bonds with their street friends. Yet as exciting and expansive as it may seem to the members, the gang world is one of narrow horizons, bound by rigid adolescent notions of honor and retribution. One day you're going to die anyway.