Gov. Charlie Baker rapped Attorney General Maura Healey yesterday for breeding “uncertainty” with her recently announced ban on so-called copycat assault weapons, publicly pitting the popular Republican and rising Democratic prosecutor against each other as she takes the issue to a national stage this week in Philadelphia.

Baker, after making statements to the media last week calling for clarity on Healey’s announcement, took the formal step yesterday of pressing her in a letter as she and other Democrats huddle for the Democratic National Convention.

Dan Bennett, Baker’s public safety secretary, wrote that Healey’s intention to close a “loophole” in the state’s assault weapons could envelop pistols that have long been legal, and described the details of what guns fall under her enforcement order as murky.

“There is a great deal of uncertainty as to which weapons you consider to be assault weapons,” Bennett wrote in his two-page letter that accompanied Baker’s. “This uncertainty could easily lead to uneven application of the law across the Commonwealth, and it would be in the best interest of all involved to have additional clarity.”

Said Baker: “Ambiguities in your notice require clarification for responsible gun owners who simply want to follow the rules and for the thousands of gun owners who were told they were following the rules for 18 years.”

Last Wednesday, Healey issued a notice to all gun sellers and manufacturers in Massachusetts banning guns which appear like the Colt AR-15 and the Kalishnikov AK-47, but have been altered by manufacturers to conform to Massachusetts’ ban on adjustable stocks, high-capacity magazines and other features.

Her office said an estimated 10,000 “copycat” assault weapons were sold in Massachusetts last year alone, though she promised that those who had legally purchased them before could keep them and not be prosecuted. Her announcement sparked a flood of rifle sales, including more than 2,500 alone the day of her press conference.

But Bennett warned that, depending on the interpretation of the notice, “a large number of firearms, including pistols that have been sold here legally for decades, may be unintentionally affected.”

Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a Healey spokeswoman, said her office consulted state public safety officials on the notice and that it “was surprising to receive this letter.”

“Many of the questions raised in the letter mirror statements by the gun lobby,” Gonzalez said. “Dealers across the state seem to understand the notice perfectly well and have come into compliance.”

In Philadelphia, Healey said that some gun makers have stopped producing the previously “Massachusetts-compliant” weapons. “I think the American public is at a point where they have seen enough,” she said at a gun control forum yesterday, according to the State House News Service.

But some advocates and gun owners have said they’re still in the dark, even if they appreciated Baker’s push for more details. “What she (Healey) did was drop a political bomb on the commonwealth and leave the state,” said Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners Action League.

Dale Solander, 54, of Quincy, said he worried the regulations would mean companies that manufacture parts for AR rifles will no longer be able to ship to the Bay State.

“If you have one of these and something breaks or something becomes defective, you’re going to create a situation with even more hazardous firearms,” Solander said. “People out there won’t have what they’ll need to fix them.”

Ronald Hidalgo, owner of the Sportsman’s Den in Quincy, said dealers there “still have no idea what we can or can’t sell.

“We wish we had better answers for our customers. We’re in a holding pattern,” he told the Herald. “We had to take the phone off the hook. We have all these questions and we can’t give them answers. Everyone is stumbling around.”