The following is an excerpt from an interview in 2019 between Saro and Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show”, in the wake of the Arthur Long Crisis. At the time, Saro was not yet a political leader; the World-Changers were still viewed as religious figures and financial giants, and the script of this interview had been carefully discussed between Saro and Jon to prevent an interruption of Saro's speech in case the reaction to it was violent. It remains one of the single most frightening speeches in media history, and even Stewart himself would admit much later that he was terrified for his life for months after the show aired. Saro was asked repeatedly in the years that followed whether or not he felt as though the speech warranted an apology, and he repeatedly answered those questions by saying that he had nothing to apologize for.

For those who do not know about the Arthur Long Crisis, a synopsis follows. In 2019, an American man named Arthur Long decided to make an extreme point about gun proliferation throughout the United States. He obtained an AR-15 rifle, an M9 Beretta, and a Desert Eagle Magnum, and began hunting down people who advertised themselves as gun rights activists. A frantic two week-long manhunt for him ensued as he continued to kill people, and he finally surrendered without violence when cornered. He killed a total of 48 people, and his trial became even more controversial when it became clear that he had wanted to be captured so that he could explain his motives on national television. He was quoted in court as saying, “I'm so glad you are filming this. I wanted to prove to all those assholes out there who think a gun makes them safer, that a gun doesn't give a shit whether or not you like their kind; it'll kill you just like everybody else. I wish I had gotten to more of them, but almost fifty isn't bad. I feel like I did my part to make this country safer.” Three people were arrested for attempting to kill him during his trial, which only made the situation more controversial, as he would smile and laugh each time it happened, and reiterate how it just proved his point.

After being asked by Stewart what Saro thought about the Arthur Long shootings and the severe controversy that had followed (his trial was not yet over as of the time of the interview), Saro replied with the following speech:

“I love the guy. Serious style. Can't say enough about how well the entire thing played out for him. (Stewart raises his eyebrows, and his mouth drops open. He begins to stammer a response, but Saro interrupts him) Oh, don't give me that. The point he made couldn't have played out more perfectly. Guy's a lunatic, but he's a genius. Let me explain something to you, (Saro gestures at the crowd) to ALL of you, about the pure beauty of the gun. In the world of economics, one of the most powerful rules you must learn to be successful is to find and focus on the root of something rather than what's on the surface. You can't fully understand the flow of money or how to leverage money properly without fully understanding the root cause of everything, whether it's your competition's motives, your client's true desires, or the financial intelligence of who you're dealing with. You can see on the surface that a company has a great idea, but if it's clear that at the root, their CEO is in it just for his own profit, suddenly you know the real story and choose not to invest. Well, suffice it to say that we've been doing a shitload of looking at the surface of this gun thing, on both sides. So let me show you the root.

“You can't un-invent something. The instant, in the ninth century A.D., that the Chinese took the invention that they had been using peacefully for decades in fireworks, and applied it to a barrel in a failed attempt to defend themselves against the Mongol hordes, history would never be the same. And let's not kid ourselves. The computer and electricity come in at a distant second to the gun on the list of the most world-changing inventions in human history. Our world is what it is because of the gun, first and foremost above anything else. Why? Not because it's efficient, like a virus, or painless, like carbon monoxide, or useable in lots of different ways, like a knife. Because it's impersonal.

“There was a time—we'll call it 'the good old days'—when if you wanted to kill someone, you had to see it happen. You had to watch the blood run sickeningly from the wound, feel it splash against your body as the person struggles for life. You had to see the light leave their eyes, hear them strain for breath, listen to the final wheezes that their lungs made as they died. You had to watch the pain, the hurt, the agony, and finally the terror that comes when someone realizes that the only thing they've ever known, life, is about to end for them. You had to witness it all, smell it, see it, hear it, taste it, feel it. In the good old days, you had to be seriously fucking psychotic to kill someone, regardless of the reason.

“But the gun changed all that. Suddenly, I don't have to watch your brain splatter out of your head, smell your internal organs, feel the blood spray from your body, listen to your pain and agony, or watch the light leave your eyes. Now, I can kill you from twenty yards, fifty yards, a hundred yards. I can line up my little fucking crosshairs right on your cute little fucking face, and all I have to do is pull a trigger and you're dead. I don't have to give a shit about you; I can pretend it's my own real life little video game, my own little action movie, and pull the trigger like I'm clicking the mouse or pushing the volume up button. Click, click, click. Pew pew, you're dead. And you're dead. And you're dead. I don't have to see it, or smell it, or hear it. You might as well be on my TV screen. And what's the single greatest thing about that? I don't have to be seriously fucking psychotic to kill you anymore. I can kill you because you laughed when I asked you to the dance. I can kill you because you gave me a bad grade. I can kill you because I have a gun and you don't. I can kill you on a power trip. I can kill you because I just fucking feel like it.

“And the beauty of the idea that I can kill you because I feel like it? A gun is the ultimate leveling mechanism. I don't have to be strong. I don't have to be big. I don't even have to know how to reload, or even how to aim. Point, and click. That's all it takes. One little press of my finger. Harmless really, I can barely even feel the effort. I'm not out of breath, I'm not tired, it really didn't bother me at all. And most importantly, it took zero planning. But I can end your life with that motion. Point, and click.

“That's the root, folks. Point, and click. It's that easy. That impersonal. I don't even really need a reason to do it. I can do it accidentally. I can do it while eating a sandwich. I can do it, then shrug my shoulders and walk away. Killing you doesn't make me break a sweat, and the best part is, I don't have to experience you dying. God, that's cool. And that's where the anti-gun folks sound like idiots. This isn't an argument about a constitutional right, or about safety, or anything like that. It's about the fact that this is an invention, our first and most easily owned and operated, that allows a human to end another human's life because they just fucking feel like it. It's about the fact that I don't have to be a psycho to kill you anymore; I just have to feel like it. It's about the fact that this is an invention that fundamentally changed the human psyche, the human personality, because it made death and killing as impersonal as the killer wants it to be; I don't have to watch you die if I don't want to, I just have to feel like it.

“Now here's where the gun advocates fuck it up. They will tell you consistently two things: first, that someone is safer if there are well trained and armed individuals around, and safest if they themselves are well trained and armed, and second, that guns don't kill people, people kill people. I'll handle the first one first. There's a giant hole in that logic, and Arthur Long is the living embodiment of it. You know what the most powerful element is in any fight, even in one with guns? Surprise. The element of surprise ends everything, and gives the person with it the ultimate advantage, regardless of skill or training or protection. Do you remember how Arthur Long killed the first person? He was driving alongside him on the road; Arthur said he saw all the bumper stickers about how many guns the guy owned and his membership in the NRA and how he was ready to kill anyone who might try to take his god-given right to his guns away. So while they were driving down the road, Arthur pulled out his Desert Eagle and blew the guy's face into the passenger-side window. He killed forty-eight people, Jon, and every single one of them owned a veritable bounty of guns. But he took them by surprise, and their precious guns were useless. Shit man, you want the ultimate example? Chris Kyle. The single most talented sniper in American history, and likely world history. This man was quite possibly the single best gun wielder in the history of mankind. He was shot and killed in 2013 by Eddie Ray Routh. On a gun range. He was armed at the time. Do you realize what I just fucking said? The single most dangerous and effective gunman in the history of the world was shot to death, while armed. If you need a stronger example than that to prove that surprise is everything with a gun, then you're a complete idiot. I'm amazed it took this long for someone to target gun owners specifically; I figured it'd happen years ago at some school in Texas where the teachers were armed, that a seventeen-year-old would walk through in full body armor with an AR-15, and pump forty-five bullets into the head of every single adult he found at the school, armed or not, just to prove that their guns couldn't stop him, before he started killing his classmates. Apparently we had to wait for ol' Arthur to get the message across.

“Now the second thing that the gun advocates fuck up: the idea that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Fundamentally, that's completely true. Can't argue with that one bit. But we just talked about two really important things about guns. One, that because of guns, it no longer requires a psycho to kill someone... now someone can do it just because they feel like it. And two, that even an amateur with a gun and the element of surprise can absolutely kill an expert with a gun who's not expecting it... in other words, the psychos almost always win that fight. A gun has no other uses. It does one thing. It kills things. That's it's only function. At best, to say you own a gun for defensive purposes means you intend to use offense as your best defense; you intend to kill someone to defend yourself. It's not a fucking shield. Murder or manslaughter, those are your two choices with a gun. And don't feed me bullshit about 'disabling' someone... we just talked about this: point, and click. It's a pretty goddamn easy thing to use; you want to disable someone from using a gun, you're going to have to kill them. So, if the psychos win almost all the fights because of the element of surprise and even the non-psychos can feel free to kill people because they feel like it, how the hell do you stop all of this violence? I'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve more guns. Here's the deal, Jon: we have a problem with people shooting other people because there are millions of guns out there. Access is everything. If you don't want a psycho shooting up your school, don't arm your teachers; just don't hand the psycho a gun. If you don't want people killing other people because they feel like it, then don't make it so easy for them to do that. Look, I said at the start of this whole thing that you can't un-invent something. Guns exist, and they always will, and militaries will always need to be armed, and so will police forces, and there will always be a black market. It would take something extreme, a video-surveillance system or something invasive like that, to truly create safety. But right now, I can fucking guarantee you that the answer is not more guns. Arthur Long is proof of that. He is extremely anti-gun, obviously, but he's also insane, and someone handed him an AR-15, an M9, and a Desert Eagle. He was out to prove that guns are everywhere, that he could arm himself with whatever the hell he wanted, and then he set out to prove that gun advocates were no match for him, a psycho with surprise. I don't know about you, but I'd say the guy proved his point about as effectively as one could possibly hope to prove any point about anything, right?”

The interview ended soon after that speech, with Stewart making jokes with Saro in an attempt to let the audience know that the two of them were okay.