TSA trying out screening with dogs as reports record number of guns found in carry-ons

(CBS News) The Transportation Security Administration is now experimenting with dogs to screen passengers.

The dogs will be used as part of the TSA's new integrated approach to security - a change from the rote one-size-fits-all methods of the past, CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, a former FBI assistant director, explained on "CBS This Morning."

The TSA's dogs are not just bomb-sniffing dogs - they're "vapor wake dogs ... that can pick up an explosive trail moving in vapor through the airport," Miller said.

That means if someone is carrying a suicide-bomb vest or backpack, the dog will put the handler on the trail en route.

The canine approach is an addition to the screening tools now available to security agents, Miller said. He explained the TSA screening will be expedited with the canines' help: "You've got a big, long line - how many times have you gotten in that line and said, 'I'm going to miss my flight' - they'll have behavioral detection officers look at a section of the line, then they'll have the dogs sweep it and if the dog doesn't alert them for explosives, 90 percent of their battle is over. They can now take those people and say, 'You're all going through the pre-queue and put you through the faster screening.'"

In other TSA news, screeners found 894 guns on passengers or in their carry-on bags, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year. According to an Associated Press report, the TSA set a record in May for the most guns seized in one week - 65 in all, 45 of them loaded and 15 with bullets in the chamber and ready to be fired. That was 30 percent more than the previous record of 50 guns, set just two weeks earlier.

Referring to why more guns are found in carry-ons, Miller quipped, "The TSA has thought about this a lot and studied it carefully and what they've determined is they don't know. They don't know why there are more guns. It's not that they're detecting them better. It's just more people leaving guns in their carry-on."

Miller said he thinks it's because more people are buying guns and not keeping track of them.

"When you have a year where Smith & Wesson ran out of guns and they said, 'We've made all the guns our machines can make and we're sold out,' where Americans - the FBI background checks shows - bought more guns than ever before, this is people who had one gun or two guns who are now keeping track of five or six and forget where they put them. 'I took that bag to the gun range last week or my hunting trip, and now I'm going to use it on my trip to Florida.' And they just don't remember."

Miller added, "It can happen to the best of us."

For more with Miller, watch his full "CTM" appearance above.