A reader writes:
No, filming yourself shooting a computer outside of the proximity of one's own child is not child abuse. It may not be effective parenting, but it's not abuse. The guy never says anything threatening toward his daughter, and never suggests that any physical punishment will follow. On the contrary, the punishment is clear: being grounded and being forced to repay her parents for costs. Moreover, he made clear that even a day earlier, he was spending his money to make his daughter happy by buying her software. I'm not a fan of guns in general. I think people who own them are, on the whole, foolish. But to suggest that this was some sort of veiled threat to his daughter is total BS.
Another writes:
Forget about the destruction of the laptop for a moment. Instead of speaking directly to his daughter in private, he posts a video online? What kind of parenting is that? Dueling nasty Facebook posts and videos are not the way to build a healthy relationship with anyone.
Another:
People are getting overworked about the gun, pure and simple.
If he'd run the car over it, or hit it with a hammer, or allowed the dogs to gnaw at the laptop, do you really think people would be hyperventilating that he's the sort of dad who would run over/hammer/set the dogs on his kid? No. Because that's ridiculous. The gun is a tool in this video, not a weapon.
The dad's controlled and relatively calm as he talks. He doesn't threaten to hit his kid, his lays out his points pretty concisely, makes it clear this is a serial offense, and then he destroys the means of disobedience while making it crystal clear that the girl can have her own computer when she earns it. None of this is violent, bar the concept that a gun is by default a violent-against-people object.
I'm pretty sure I remember this moment as a teenage girl (though without the YouTube component, obviously). It's the time you do something so egregious that your parent lays down the law in a mind-blowing way. It makes an impression when your parents prove they're willing to burn their own money to make you listen. There's a huge difference between confiscation and flat-out destruction.
"If a husband shot a .45 into a wife’s computer, I have no doubt it would be considered an act of domestic violence." Come ON. Elizabeth Wilson's being ridiculous, and again I think she's hypersensitive to the gun. A husband-wife relationship is very, very different from a father-child relationship. The kid's computer was "hers" only because her parents allowed it. It's their computer, and this is going to be one hell of a wake-up call for this girl. (I mean, seriously, did you READ that Facebook post she wrote? This is not the time for a chat about feelings.)
Another sends the above screenshot:
This is related to the story in your previous post about the laptop-shooting dad, but it's funnier and, I'm guessing, ultimately more effective. This is one of those stories I came across on the Internet that I’m praying is real. The father of a 15-year-old boy named Chris stumbled upon his son’s Facebook page when Chris left his account logged on to the family computer. What the father saw surprised him, so he wrote a fabulous status update.
The Dish 