An unsettling sign from the Obama Administration this week in the form of statements made by Attorney General Eric Holder. It seems that the specter of the assault rifle ban may be coming round again.

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.

Even during the primary, when you would expect Democratic candidates to be running hard to the left, I seem to recall Obama falling all over himself to assure people that nobody was coming to take their guns away and speaking of his respect for hunters. Admittedly, he didn’t go quite as far as Hillary “Annie Oakley” Clinton and her tales of a backwoods upbringing hunting ducks, but message seemed pretty clear at the time.

I’m not really on the extreme end of the pro-2nd amendment crowd. I draw a distinction between “arms” and “weapons of war.” This is one area where I believe the advances of technology have outstripped the vision of the founders. I don’t believe that everyone has a right to a tank, a mortar, a cannon or a water-cooled, belt-fed .50 caliber machine gun. But I become uncomfortable whenever we get around to trying to define that gray line where “guns” end and “weapons of war” begin. Bazookas are not terribly practical for either hunting or home defense, but a bolt action 30:06 and a nine mm. handgun fill the bill nicely. What about the so-called assault rifles? It pushes the line pretty close to “coming for your guns” territory and I’ve really never been able to get behind the whole clip size argument either.

I’ll wait to hear from President Obama himself on this one, but Holder’s words put my teeth on edge. After the Heller decision I thought we might be reaching a nice point of stability in the gun control debate. I’d hate to see the Obama Administration rip that wound open anew.