@Delatron, you and many other posters here are clearly ignorant of the way the federal and state relationship works.
The US is not a monolithic state. It is comprised of fifty states, each with its own government, and many powers vented in it, powers that go way beyond the devolution of Scotland, Wales, NI. Each state has its own House and Senate, its own state Supreme Court, and can make trade agreements for its own state with foreign governments and can compete with other states to attract business, using taxes and other means. Interstate commerce has its own rules and regulations. Moving girls across state lines for sexual exploitation was one of the crimes Jeffrey Epstein was charged with.
States set their own speed limits and on intercontinental highways, set their own DUI limits, their own rules on motorbike helmets, on abortion availability, on constituency drawing, on election rules. They levy state income taxes and other taxes. They have their own separate education systems, school graduation requirements, state health and welfare administration, and their own state university systems, and much more.
States constitute their own little political and cultural ecosystems (actually most states are far bigger and more self contained than the average Brit can imagine) and regions with similar cultures develop. Hence the American Civil War.
My state locked down early during the pandemic, it made masks mandatory, and is still running vaccination ads on radio and TV. It expanded medicaid under the ACA Act. For several terms now, it has been represented by two Democratic senators in the US Senate, and the majority, if not all, of the elected state administrators ( secretary of state, comptroller, etc) are Democrats.
I don't know why you thought you could get away with the damning judgement you posted on people who are happy to raise children in the US and see cause for hope in it - 'desensitised' are we? - especially since you have clearly managed to accommodate yourself to the massive and apparently intractable issues besetting the UK.
The Tories have a huge majority in the House of Commons. Clearly there are plenty of people - in England anyway - who are happy to see a government lurching into neoliberal wet dream territory, and resigned to whatever horrors Brexit brings to the average British home, with attendant decimation of prospects for young people. No doubt you will disavow all of that though, or point fingers at the first past the post system (which needs changing btw).
What is happening in many parts of the US right now is on its way to the UK, with the open arms of the Tory voting public waiting for it. The Heritage Foundation and the Mercer family, the masterminds of the Trump election and the ongoing MAGA movement, have well and truly sunk their claws into the Tories. Anyone who thinks the UK is immune to developments in the US is fooling herself.
It seems you are also ignorant of pressure groups in the US working against the gun lobby or for women's rights and voting rights. As a member of Moms Demand Action along with over ten million others in every state and DC, I resent the implication that people in America are complacent and have given up caring. It is possible to hate what's going on and work for change and also send your children off to school without worrying that they'll be shot. It's possible for children to rehearse drills for shooters, for tornadoes, or for fires without being scarred for life.