| Summary: | Abstract Intergroup violence is assumed to play a key role in establishing and maintaining gang competitive dominance. However, it is not clear how competitive ability, gang size and reciprocal violence interact. Does competitive dominance lead to larger gangs, or allow them to remain small? Does competitive dominance lead gangs to mount more attacks against rivals, or expose them to more attacks? We explore a model developed in theoretical ecology to understand communities arranged in strict competitive hierarchies. The model is extended to generate expectations about gang size distributions and the directionality of gang violence. Model expectations are explored with twenty-three years of data on gang homicides from Los Angeles. Gangs may mitigate competitive pressure by quickly finding gaps in the spatial coverage of superior competitors. Competitively superior gangs can be larger or smaller than competitively inferior gangs and a disproportionate source or target of directional violence, depending upon where exactly they fall in the competitive hierarchy. A model specifying the mechanism of competitive dominance is needed to correctly interpret gang size and violence patterns.
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