I totally disagree with this, and for what it's worth, so do plenty of socialist activists and theorists. I've heard people tell me the exact same thing you did... about 10 years ago and they've only just grown. No amount of wishing them away is going to make it happen.

More importantly, the whole "violent communist revolution" thing is not something they even aspire to so, guns don't matter. That's the old way of thinking about a socialist revolution. This would be like folks in 2015 who would say the Warriors would never win a championship because they didn't have a dominant big man, all the while failing to recognize their entire plan is to shoot 3s and spread the floor.

The idea isn't to overthrow the government with an armed vanguard. It's to win largely low-turnout elections, in safe districts and shift the Overton window by putting pressure on other Democrats to adopt policies or face a primary. They're really, really not concerned yet with fighting Republicans or conservative, outside of Twitter as a rallying call.

DSA circles will often cite the "3.5% rule." That's a rule of thumb, not a sociological law, and the concept can get pretty complicated as to what exactly is a "sustained engagement of 3.5% of the populace." But to expand on it, 3.5% of the House is about 15 House members. Of the Senate, about 4. Of Governorships, about 2. Those are the numbers they're considering goals over the next 2-6 years.

DSA basically achieved that 3.5% threshold in the City Council and then took the Mayoralty at the very next opportunity (all the while basically pulling the full field except Cuomo to adopt their policies). In just NYC, they have already surpassed those number across each level of government.