Feedback loop is way too long and way too uncertain for people to care. What can you even do to visibly affect decisions being made? There is nothing an individual person can do, because no one in power cares about individual people, whether they go picket or post to facebook.

There are tens of millions of people in the US that really want <X> to change, for a lot of <X>. However, without acting as a unified group they don't matter because they're dwarfed by equally disorganized and apathetic people who don't care. There are many examples from around the world of people getting what they want when they are numerous and well organized. Don't even need to look far, NRA is an example of this collective power (to some extent) in the US itself.

There is a social engineering solution to this somewhere, just like the current situation is a result of deliberate social engineering, not some inevitable evolution of democracy.