When the Roman soldiers came to pick up Yeshua, one of the disciples chopped the ear off of one of them, according to the Bible (Yeshua supposedly healed the ear afterwards).
The disciples were some thugs basically- not in the negative sense, in 2Pac's sense. Some roughnecks.
Thugs would be understood as a good description of the desciples for the youth...some of the older qeneration may prefer the terms warriors or revolutionaries...just a thought....but you had a good metaphor for the youth.