To shoot or not to shoot?!?

In today's society everyone seems overly sensitive to violence. I am not saying that I am an advocate of violence by any means but I also think that this is something that has become too sensitive due to all the horrible things we hear on the news. The problem is those horrible events tend to have deeper rooted issues than a child that played cowboys and Indians (I'm not sure if you can call it that anymore?!?). I played cowboys and Indians and I always wanted to be the Indian (Native American?) and shoot people with my pretend bow and arrow. My brother and I also stole a crossbow that we found in the basement and shot pencils up into the trees. Smart? NO! Normal childhood stupidity? ABSOLUTELY! That is not to say that I wouldn't absolutely forbid my child to grab the crossbow and go running out into the bushes (I'm sure my mom is really happy to know that we did it!!LOL!!) but I also think that if he did that there wouldn't be anything abnormal about it (assuming no one got hurt there would just be a horrified momma!!). I am a fairly average girl and because I'd fit in the "girly" category most people don't know that I love shooting ranges, have my gun licence, and have always loved martial arts and yet there is nothing violent or abnormal about me. Generally Connor watches Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Toopy and Binoo on TV. Recently he's become obsessed with Toy Story. None of these are violent by any means BUT he has picked out Zurg as a favorite in Toy Story and takes the little guy and runs around shooting all his other characters and then, a lot of the time, kisses them better and keeps playing. I think this is the normal development of a little boy (perhaps less the kissing better!) and I'm not in a rush to stop it. Some people completely disagree but my mother never made it a big deal of my odd games or strange movie choices and I plan on taking the same approach. He is the gentlest child at his Gymboree class and likes to give all the other "babies" (i.e. anyone younger than him) toys for them to play with so I have zero concerns over him being violent in any way. I just find it interesting that everyone is so anxious to stop little boys from playing games that they've played for years. There was an article in the paper this week that discussed sharing and gentler TV shows resulted in calmer less violent children...I have always been a gentle, caring person, and yet at 4 years old I was obsessed with Conan the Barbarian. I'm sure many of you disagree with me but I just don't see the correlation and think that violence stems from the surrounding environment as opposed to TV choices or games. Every child needs to experiment and play and I worry that by stopping our boys / girls from having their games we're making them more curious about it rather than preventing violence outside of playing. I don't want this taken the wrong way...if Connor was to exhibit violent behaviour towards another child I would be mortified and the behavior would be addressed but Zurg shooting buzz doesn't fall in this category in my opinion.