The U.S. House of Representative recently approved a 10-year extension of an existing federal law banning guns that can go undetected by metal detectors and X-ray machines.

The law bans the manufacture, possession and sale of firearms that can’t be detected by metal detectors and requires handguns be manufactured in the shape of a gun so they can be screened on X-ray machines.

The 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act was enacted under President Reagan and reauthorized under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is among a group of Senate Democrats that sought to amend the law to require that metal had to be permanently attached to the gun, closing a huge loophole that would allow removable metal parts.

In case anyone thinks that adding the amendment is an unnecessary burden on Second Amendment rights, think for a moment how easy it would be to avoid security and detectors at airports or government buildings by having a removable metal part such as a trigger.

Hollywood has certainly considered it.

In the 1993 Clint Eastwood movie, In The Line of Fire, John Malkovich played a mentally disturbed former Secret Service agent who uses a composite gun with removable metal parts to avoid security as he attempts to assassinate the President of the United States.

If a Hollywood scriptwriter has considered having a removable metal part on a plastic gun, we know that some nutcase has or is considering it as well.

Adding an amendment to the law seems like an intelligent and rationale thing to do. But then, Congress is neither intelligent nor rationale when it comes to the Second Amendment.

I really hope the scenario depicted in the Clint Eastwood movie remains fictional instead of a blueprint that puts us all In The Line of Fire.