Guns ‘N’ Noses: Mall Hires Firearm-Sniffing Dog
If you’ve got a Mauser, watch out for that schnauzer! The Mall of America has recruited canine backup to catch pistol packing shoppers - and it’s already working
By Bram Teitelman · March 22, 2024
Here’s a good rule of thumb from your friends at Odd News Show: don’t bring firearms to the mall. We can understand why you might make that mistake, but the store is called Aeropostale, not “Air Pistol.” Other than “all of the malls,” one mall you definitely won’t want to bring your gun to is the Mall of America, which still has the honor of being the largest mall in the country. That’s because the Minnesota shopping center has just welcomed their first gun-sniffing dog to its workforce, as reported by KSTP, and they’re training the rest of their non-human crew.
The mall has been using dogs for 20 years to sniff out potential explosives and to intimidate any cats or mail carriers trying to enter the mall. However, after some high-profile shootings, the mall spent eight weeks extensively training one of their dogs, Ellie (whose name is sadly not “Paul Bark: Mall Cop”), to recognize if a mallgoer is packing heat. Canine Lieutenant Kenny McDonough, surprisingly not a dog himself, told the news outlet that dogs are taught to smell different gun components. “None of our dogs do any kind of barking, any kind of bite work,” McDonough said. “They’re trained to pinpoint down to the actual person where that odor is coming from.”
While their prior training as explosive-sniffing pooches had them focus on static places one might find a bomb, like garbage containers, suitcases, or any movie theaters showing Madame Web, the new crew of recruits, or AK-9s as we’re calling them from now on, can sniff out the guns on moving objects, aka people unwise enough to come to the mall strapped. If Ellie sniffs out a weapon, she’ll make a 90-degree turn, alerting her handlers that something’s amiss.
Mall of America head of security Will Bernhjelm tells KSTP that the new program already helped track down some gun owners, although many of them have been registered gun owners with conceal and carry permits, unaware that they can’t Yosemite Sam it up in the mall, which is private property. However, aside from that, he says the new paw patrol is “also a deterrent for people that may want to come here with a firearm knowing that we have this capability.” So you’ve heard it here first - the only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good boy with a snout.