Hate to say it but you're right. If people cared, they'd actually do something about it.

People are doing something, the issue with you two's extremely poor thinking is that lack of inaction means no one cares. What it actually represents is the massive growing disparity between the political class and average Americans.

There is >70% public support universal background checks for all firearm transactions, safe storage laws, and crisis intervention. Just the same that there is also large public support for things like public jobs programs, medicare for all, universal childcare, or free university; there is a very real obstacle that the political class in this country are adamant about stopping all progress towards better lives and not strictly caring that the elites extract more wealth or corporations get more welfare.

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tokioyoyo 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm very sorry, but I've heard that "there's large public support for X, Y, Z" for decades. If there's no real action in achieving such things, my assumption is people don't actually care about it.

Personally, when I "care about something", I try to act on it. My list is not long, and I'm very grateful that I don't have to spend a single minute of my life to think about school shootings.

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ndiddy 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

If you're not American, one thing that you have to keep in mind whenever you hear "there's large public support in the US for [insert vaguely left-wing thing here] but nothing gets done about it" is that the US's system of government is really only vaguely a democracy. It gives a disproportionate amount of power to conservative rural voters at the expense of everybody else.

This is exemplified in the Senate, which is the least representative legislative body of any democracy I am aware of. Each state gets 2 votes regardless of population, so Wyoming (population ~550,000) is given the same amount of votes as California (population ~39,000,000). Any remotely controversial piece of legislation needs to pass the Senate with a 60% majority. This means that 21 Republican states making up ~20% of the population can block any bill they don't want to pass. Senators are also elected for 6 year terms, which limits how accountable they are to their constituents.

If a bill gets past the Senate, it makes its way to the president, who has veto power over all legislation. The president is elected by electors selected by the states rather than individual voters, and the number of electors is not fairly apportioned either. For example, there are ~728,000 people per elector in California, but ~196,000 people per elector in Wyoming.

In effect, this means that public opinion has essentially no impact on the legislation the US government passes. A 2014 Princeton study ( https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th... ) found that "When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

If you're interested in why the system was designed this way, I highly recommend the book "The Framers' Coup" by Michael Klarman.

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Avicebron 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You clearly missed the part about the divide between the political class and everyone else.

Most people in the US are just trying to pay rent and maybe one day save up for a house by the time they are 40-50.

If you don't see this you are either 1) making enough money you are part of the problem 2) don't actually live in the US so have a completely unmoored understanding of reality on the ground here

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tokioyoyo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I obviously don’t live in the US. My entire point was that people say that care about school shootings and etc., but unless they do anything about it, those are just words.

Given the voting record of the majority of the population, I tend to believe that an average American cares more about SPX. Which, honestly, is fine by me. Every nation and culture is different, freedom and etc. etc.. But it would be hard to convince me that an average citizen cares about it, because, once again, nothing has changed in decades.

For the record, I have nothing against Americans, you guys are a lovely bunch. But it is what it is.

	▲	solenoid0937 an hour ago \| parent [-]
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vntok 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed, the more accurate way to say it is that people in the US don't care enough about mass school shootings to do something about it besides thought and prayers.