Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson told The Daily Caller that the massacre at the midnight premiere of “The Dark Night Rises” in Aurora, Colo., might have ended differently if an audience member was also carrying a gun.

“It’s a horrible tragedy” said Johnson. “I just hope that the government doesn’t start taking all sorts of actions to prevent something like this from happening again — when it’s going to happen again… It’s made me rethink getting a concealed carry permit for myself that if I would have been in that situation, that I personally may have been in a position to bring it to an end.”

“If we’re going to ban weapons, the people that will have weapons will be criminals,” the former New Mexico governor added. “It’s not legal to have tear gas, and this guy had tear gas. So laws don’t prevent criminals from conducting their activity. It’s law-abiding citizens that in this case, if just someone would have been armed in that theater, perhaps they could have brought this tragedy to an end or made it less of a tragedy than it was.”

Johnson also explained how he is different from Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama.

“I’m the only candidate that doesn’t want to bomb Iran,” said Johnson. “I want to get out of Afghanistan tomorrow. I want to bring the troops home… I promise to submit a balanced budget to Congress in the year 2013. I promise to advocate on the part of throwing out the entire federal tax system, no more income tax, no more corporate tax, no more IRS, abolish the IRS and establish one federal consumption tax, in this case the fair tax.”

Videography by Sarah Hofmann

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