Great example of moving the goalposts. You wrote "total lack of action" for which there is counter-evidence in the form of a national government action. With the same logic, one might as well claim that an entire firearm is an accessory to whatever is redefined as the "real problem."

This commenter also fails to recognize that there is a tremendous amount of political activity aimed at changing gun laws, and that represents real and earnest efforts on the parts of tens of thousands of people (or orders of magnitude more, depending on where we set the bar for having "done something").

It's true that our system of government and industry is set up to preserve itself and resist sweeping change. It is further true some incredibly wealthy and influential individuals within the system are aligned with those goals, making change all the more difficult and unlikely (this applies to climate change as it does to gun laws, car culture, throw-away consumerism, etc). It is a mistake to equate trying and failing to change massive and powerful institutions with doing nothing.

I get it, from a cynical and pessimistic perspective, doing nothing vs trying hard but failing to do something all looks the same in the end (when society is roasting canned spam on it's own embers, as we might imagine). But fatalism becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, and mostly appeals because it has the "benefit" of requiring no action of the individual. Just a lifetime of depression, apathy, and/or moral bankruptcy.

Even if the fatalist is wrong, it means people made things work out for them in the end and they didn't even have to lift a finger. What a deal! It certainly has its appeal to those parts of our brain that we share with lizards and other creatures that look to avoid personal risk and conserve energy at almost any cost.