I knew a lot of kids who played “Army”, and haven’t seen any of them show up on the news.
That’s because kids playing like to play act- and that’s all it is- play acting- but they eventually outgrow that desire- and never go on to confuse play acting with reality-
It is uncontrolled anger and an inability to control one’s emotions that causes unstable people to commit horrible crimes- not play acting as children. Play acting infact helps children learn to become social citizens, stable citizens- citizens able to control their emotions eventually- as they interact with their friends- There simply is no evidence that playing cops and robbers leads to violent crimes- infact the majority of evidence proves it is healthy part of growing up
4 in my family & we played ‘cowboys & indians’ all the time.