(15) You shall not make any unrighteous judgments; do not elevate poor nor favor the privileged; with righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. (16) Do not go around as a talebearer among your people; Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD. (17) You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you must rebuke your fellow rather than hold it in and sin on their account. (18) Do not take vengeance or bear any grudge against any of your people; love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
There's a lot here, but I want to highlight the verse "do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor." The medieval commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, known commonly as Rashi, tells us this means we must intervene when we can. He says:
(ב) לא תעמד על דם רעך. לראות במיתתו ואתה יכול להצילו, כגון טובע בנהר, וחיה או לסטים באים עליו:
(2) Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor - This means: You may not simply stand there and watch a person die if there is a possibility that you might be able to save his or her life. For example if you see a person drowning in a river or being chased by a wild animal or bandits.
Rashi's examples are not necessarily cases where we know that we will be able to save the person, but still we have to try.
We hear so many different ideas about how to prevent gun violence that we can easily become overwhelmed and unsure if anything we do will help.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that this text juxtaposes the obligation to save a life with the prohibition against vengeance. Unfortunately, we are not just faced with external calamities, such as Rashi's examples of drowning or being chased by an animal. The obligation to save a life precedes a statement about the very real danger of human volatility.
Bringing ourselves to a greater awareness of the dangers we have created for ourselves and knowing the obligation we have to prevent our fellow human beings from dying a senseless death, we now find ourselves at this critical juncture, in need of gathering our shared resources and manifesting our power to put a stop to the rampant gun violence we are experiencing today.