SHIRT-TAIL NAPOLEONS | 2007-11-02
This is a useful term.
A commenter mentioned a deputy sheriff who insisted, like the cop father on Frasier, that nobody without a police costume should have a gun. That is, after all, the one thing a person who barely got through high school gets from being a cop: having a gun on.
I remember in one of my visits to a police area, seeing an ugly old man in shirtsleeves with a .44 Magnum. He had a look on his face that said, "See? I can carry this thing in the open." He was the poster-child for Shirt-Tail Napoleons.
Give a little man a little authority and he goes nuts about it. The more a cop is for gun control, the smaller a man he is.