WILMINGTON, Del. — When epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came to this city, they were not here to track an outbreak of meningitis or study the effectiveness of a particular vaccine.

They were here to examine gun violence.

This city of about 70,000 had a 45 percent jump in shootings from 2011 to 2013, and the violence has remained stubbornly high; 25 shooting deaths have been reported this year, slightly more than last year, according to the mayor’s office.

A city councilor, Hanifa G. N. Shabazz, said the violence felt like an illness, so city and state leaders turned to the nation’s best-known disease specialists for help investigating it. “Just like any other epidemic,” Ms. Shabazz said, “we need to be quarantined, categorized by severity, infused with nutrients, healthy substance, programs, and healed.”

The study has been received here with a measure of enthusiasm and questions about what to do next. And it has caught the attention of researchers around the country, who call it a fairly rare look at gun violence by an agency that they say has been effectively limited for nearly two decades in pursuing that line of inquiry by its congressional appropriation.