Walk into Walmart and you can usually find it: an aisle of weaponry, with names like the Firestrike, Rampage and Hail-Fire, advertising quick firing, ammunition clips and “semi-auto” capability. “Build your arsenal!” read the box for one, sitting next to a “tactical vest” meant to repel barrages of ... foam darts.

Those products, you see, are not actual guns but “blasters” made by Nerf, a brand of Hasbro and meant for children ages 8 and up. But in light of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, such toys — and their seemingly quasi-militaristic marketing — have some parents mulling what to say when their children reach for the toy holster.

“I have no idea what I’m going to do when he asks for one,” said Brooke Berman, a New York writer with a 2-year-old boy.

“My initial impulse is to say: ‘No. We don’t play with guns. They’re not toys.’ But then, the fact is, they are toys.”