Since then, variations of that strategy have been implemented in cities across the country. For example, according to a study by the Campbell Collaboration, a nonprofit organization that evaluates the effects of this type of intervention, Stockton, Calif., saw a 42 percent reduction in its monthly count of gun homicides in the first year of the strategy’s implementation; similarly, Oakland, Calif., saw just under a 30 percent reduction. (In 2017, the city is on track to have its second-lowest homicide rate in over 30 years.)

While movies, television and news outlets often give the impression that entire cities and neighborhoods are filled with thugs, criminals and killers, the reality is that those responsible for a majority of shootings represent a tiny percentage of the residents of any given city. In response to this fact, effective gun violence reduction strategies adopt a highly targeted, data-based approach in which the small number of individuals most at risk for shooting (and being shot) are provided with individualized programs of support and pressure to lay down their guns. To this end, law enforcement officials, clergy members, community leaders, social service providers and mentors who have themselves escaped violent lifestyles work in partnership with one another to help these individuals turn their lives around.

Part of the beauty of this approach is that unlike tactics such as “stop and frisk” policing, these strategies do not eat away at already fractured relationships between law enforcement and communities of color. Instead, they harness the leadership and experience of the people who live in and understand these communities. Unlike the national gun violence prevention policy efforts, which tend to be led by progressive white groups and individuals, they ensure that those who are directly affected — mostly people of color — decide how peacemaking and anti-violence initiatives are carried out.

Given the positive results, many astutely ask why these approaches have not been implemented more widely. The central answer is that the high death tolls in urban communities of color have proved to be socially and politically acceptable to mainstream America. For some reason, while mass shootings like the one we saw in Las Vegas are widely seen as symptomatic of a “national” problem, the continuing scourge of killings in our cities isn’t. The result is that neither Democratic nor Republican Justice Departments have funded these types of violence reduction strategies on a large scale.

Absent a targeted investment strategy from the federal government, some local communities have taken on the challenge for themselves. In most cases, this has been made possible through relatively small reallocations of city or county funds. Police departments in urban areas often account for large percentages of city budgets but end up spending more time and resources trying to solve murders rather than working to prevent them. The RAND Corporation estimates that a single murder costs the community over $8 million in court, police, hospital, incarceration and other expenditures. Even the most fiscally conservative among us can agree that a $1 million to $2 million investment at the city or county level would more than pay for itself with even minimal homicide decreases.