[bert]

Another possibility is that Bank robberies might not have been as common as we are led to believe

[driftless2]

"not as common"

I think you're correct. Movie and tv westerns made it seem like there were daily shootouts and bank robberies in those western towns while the facts say otherwise. I'd like to count the number of bad guys Marshal Dillon put in Boot Hill. "Gunsmoke" ran for about twenty years, so the number must be over 500. The real number of bad guys put down by the lawmen in Dodge probably was a minute fraction of that total.