Why are all the good ones communist?

I like my roommate. He’s a computer programer, likes the same kind of snobby, well made coffee that I do, is quiet, goes to bed around the same time I do. He even lets me borrow his stuff. But his politics really piss me off.
Okay, before you stop reading because you've already read a bunch of pieces about the crazy stuff that everyone's racist uncle believes, now would be a good time to say that my roommate is a communist. Not a smidge to the left of Bernie Communist. He’s a violent revolution, seize power when you can, the United States is an illegitimate, irredeemable nation, authoritarian communist. Many of his opinions get to me, and we’ve rocked out dorm with some of our arguments, but of all of the positions he has, its his stance on gun control that bothers me the most.
When we started talking about gun policy in the wake of the Parkland shooting, I thought he would want to go further than me, with a full blown project of gun confiscation. To my surprise, however, he is against an assault weapons ban or comprehensive background checks. When I got over my initial state of surprise, I pressed him on why, and subsequently got into a 30 minute long row.
Trying to be as fair as possible to my roommate, (Lets just call him Conrad for fun), I will reiterate his two positions as best I can.

1.) Gun confiscation will never happen. Because many white supremacist militias, brownshirt groups, neo-nazi organizations and other assorted right wing crazies have assault weapons, the radical left and people of color need assault weapons to defend themselves.
2.) The police department's of America essentially function as occupying forces in minority areas and people have a right to defend themselves against the police. He cites the Black Panthers to support this position

I think this is bullshit, and I think it’s bad for America. I could go into why in great depth, but that not the point of the assignment. Even though it runs contrary to the vast majorities of studies about guns, even though the Southern Poverty Law Center makes it pretty damn clear that right wing militias target federal employees and installations and not leftists, even though racheting the body count up with the police is only a recipe for more funerals of black men, Conrad is firm in his convictions and in the context of his worldview, they make sense. Let's unpack that a little bit. Because as I think about it, if I was an authoritarian communist, I might want some weapons too.
Conrad has no confidence in civic institutions. If you try to appeal to the righteousness of the courts, the power of education, or even the concept of representative democracy itself, he will respond with mass incarceration, segregated schools that are underfunded in minority areas, and rampant corruption and the power of money in politics. If you think about all of the incredible transgressions of America, if you do what ALL FOLKS SHOULD, and seriously meditate on works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kendrick Lamar, or Malcolm X, you start to wonder if America can be saved or even if it should be saved. Once you’re in that place, it is not a far jump to authoritarianism, and once you’re through the looking glass in that respect, wanting weapons isn't that big of a jump either.
At the root of this is a belief about suffering. I think Conrad believes all suffering is illegitimate, and that if a state is actively perpetrating suffering, as our late capitalist republic surely does, then it therefore must be illegitimate as well. Where we differ is that I believe that suffering can occasionally begat worthwhile struggle and painfully slow reform. Conrad thinks I am wasting my time with this incrementalism, and might say “yeah, but while you’re working on that, can you please let us at least protect ourselves?”. I don’t think he is right, but I also think he has a point. The prospect of violence, suffering, and death is terrifying, and he is entitled to want to keep it as far away as possible, and entitled to think that a gun is the best way to maintain that distance. The point is not as much that I think ratcheting up the body count is a lousy way to live and achieve policy goals. The point is that I believe that the only way to have a wholescale elimination of these problems is through benevolent authoritarianism that could somehow use the very violence of the state to sweep away systemic racism and all of the white supremacist brownshirts as collateral. I am not willing to go there, and Conrad is. He isn't stupid and he isn't acting in bad faith. He has a really good handle on the sins of America.
I think I am right. I want to go into politics and be a moral person at the stand time. I am staking my career, and more, my ethos on the belief that I am right. Nothing can explain this other than the simple fact that I am unabashedly, madly in love with the idea of people coming together to stand in little booths and pull levers to decide who governs.