Washington Nationals pitchers had just finished a disappointing half-inning when the sound of gunfire pierced the normal crowd noise at Nationals Park Saturday night. The sound was unmistakable, though the source was a mystery: Was it just another random Washington shooting, or a Mandalay Bay-style attack in which a gunman was seeking mass murder in a crowded venue?

The 33,000 people inside the stadium weren’t going to wait to find out. They surged toward the exits and spilled out onto the streets, taking cover where they could find it, including some of us who found refuge in an apartment building thanks to a stranger who simply held open the door. The exodus was fairly orderly under the circumstances; most disconcerting were the scattered scenes of parents huddled over crying children.

The gunfire turned out to be a drive-by shooting just outside the stadium gates, in which at least three people were wounded. Thus the incident, while unsettling on a larger scale, was less traumatic than the shooting just one day earlier and 3 miles away in which a 6-year-old girl, who had not yet started first grade, was killed when caught in a similar outburst of gunfire.

She was among 101 homicide victims in Washington this year and, as the Washington Post noted in its coverage, died on the third anniversary of the shooting death of a 10-year-old killed by a stray bullet while walking to an ice-cream truck, and seven months after a 15-month-old was struck while in a car seat.

There now is no doubt that America is experiencing a post-pandemic surge in gun violence that is hitting minority urban communities particularly hard. The Major Cities Chiefs Association, an organization of large-city police executives, reports that homicides in those jurisdictions rose 29% in the first quarter over the same period a year earlier, while aggravated assaults rose 9%. That follows a 33% rise in homicides in 2020 over 2019.

While such numbers are stark, a little perspective also is in order. Overall, violent crime in the U.S. has plunged since the 1990s. A recent report by the Pew Research Center, for example, cited FBI statistics showing that violent crimes per 100,000 people dropped almost 50% between 1993 and 2019.

Still, the trend lines now are moving in the wrong direction. The Biden administration is trying to do something about it. President Biden himself has met twice in recent weeks with local police officials and other leaders, and has announced a strategy under which the administration will, among other things, crack down on rogue gun dealers who don’t follow federal guidelines for sales and background checks, try to stem the flow of homemade “ghost guns” and set up task forces to police gun trafficking corridors.

Yet while the most high-profile incidents in recent days happened to occur in Washington, the current political alignment in Washington seems ill equipped to provide the best answers.

It seems increasingly clear that there are simply too many powerful guns circulating on America’s streets, yet Republicans are certain to oppose en masse almost all gun-control measures. Meantime, last year’s “defund the police” movement among some Democrats seems particularly misplaced now; as a political matter it almost certainly cost Democrats ground in last fall’s election, and as a practical matter probably contributed to a decline in hiring and retention of police officers.

Getting more police back on the streets clearly is part of the answer, and the administration is providing money to help do so. Yet there is another, hyperlocal movement that may hold out more hope.

Earlier

President Biden announced a new strategy in late June to combat growing gun violence in cities, including going after rogue gun dealers and using Covid-19 relief money to fund hiring law-enforcement personnel and community investments. Photo: Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images (Video from 6/23/21) The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

Susan Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser, says she was struck in the meetings Mr. Biden held with local law-enforcement officials by the critical importance those leaders attached to an idea called community violence intervention, or CVI.

The premise of CVI is that the majority of gun violence is perpetrated by small groups of people, many usually already known to local leaders. CVI programs impanel community activists and leaders to work on the streets, identifying disputes and individuals with the potential to produce violence, intervene to defuse those problems, and deliver stern warnings of harsh consequences if violence results.

“The most effective programs share a common premise, borne out by years of data: a very small and readily identifiable segment of a city’s population is responsible for the vast majority of that city’s gun violence,” says a report by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “By strategically intervening with this small population—usually only a few hundred people—these programs have been able to cut gun homicide rates by as much as 50% in as little as two years.”

The Biden administration is allowing pandemic relief funds to be used on such programs. There are other issues at the local level, including tensions between some progressive prosecutors and police leaders over whether to reduce the number and scope of prosecutions. Still, community intervention, while no silver bullet, is a notably promising local answer to a national problem.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com