First things first. The bike in question is a 200 dollar walmart bike.

Anyway, it has Shimano E-Z fire shifters on it. The other day the bolt came loose on the the rear shifter's up lever and so I tightened it up and applied some loc-tite to keep it from happening again. Well I figured I would do the same to the front shifter too. Now that I had more trouble reassembling this as the spring popped out but eventually I figured it out.

The thing is, it doesn't want to shift down now. When it's in third gear and I hit down it'll click into second, but when I shift down to first there is no click and it slightly goes below the number 2. However the cable is loose. I've messed with the front derailleur a lot and no matter what I can't get it to pull the cable (and chain) back down into first from second gear or third.

Another thing is that the night before I was putting the chain back on and my chain remover screwed up and I ended up having to remove 4 or 5 links before I got it back on. The chain is a 7 speed chain I guess.

So... Is my front derailleur screwed up and won't spring back right, or is my chain too tight and derailleur simply can't push it down?

So, you made your chain much shorter and now it doesn't want to shift down to the small ring? It shouldn't want to go up to the big ring instead.

Aside from the chain-shortening bit, it sounds like something's suddenly up with your front derailleur... so it won't shift down despite cable slack, right? You need to find out what's stopping it, if it isn't the cable. What about the limit screws?

What happens if you pull on the cable and work the shifter? Does the shifter work okay like that?

So you need to buy a new chain (a chain too short can easily destroy a bike.) You also need to read up on setting limit screws on a derailleur.

disconnect the cable from your front deraileur. this should allow the cage to move to your inner ring or beyond. if the cage doesnt move inward toward your frame then its just your limiting screws on the deraileur body. if it does move all the way in, shift your rapidfire down into 1, connect the cable, and try it again. if you still have no clicking on the downshift then you messed up something on the actual shifter, like the spring or the bolt is too tight..

I'll get a new chain. I have messed with limit screw a lot, I've let it out all the way. The shifter does click and go all the way to first if I pull on the cable. The derailleur still doesn't want to move it down. It won't even shift down to second. I can get a video of it tomorrow if it'll help.

Alright, so I worked on it again today and got it somewhat working, and I'm pretty sure the front derailleur is just really crappy. I don't think it has enough resistance to pull the chain back down. If you saw this thing you would understand. So I was wondering if I could get some recommendations for a new derailleur. I don't want to spend much more than $30 on it though since the bike is just a Walmart bike. It's a 21 speed bike, the front derailleur clamps on, and the cable comes through the top.

Seems like it might be a bit stiff, is that it? You can prolly fix it unless the spring is just too weak, which would be a bit strange.

Try setting up the front derailleur again from scratch. Unless it's broken, my experience is that even the lowest quality derailleurs can be made to shift correctly. The shifter quality is more important. It may be that the derailleur is gunked up with that annoying road crud that moving parts tend to get covered with. Give it a good clean up and see if it will shift down with the cable disconnected.