I told my dad if I ever posted anything like what she posted he could shoot my compy to pieces as long as he took a vid of it.
Also, I assume her father bought the laptop for her, seeing as one of his complaints was that she never got a job.

Hmm. Do you think that this lesson will make her rethink her approach, and agree with her father? Do you think that this was the best way of achieving this?

For a lesson to be taught successfully, the message needs to actually reach the recipient ... ;)

To be fair, growing up I knew a few kids that got a weekly allowance for doing chores around the house. If she can't get a job an allowance isn't a bad way to point her towards some of the responsibilities that come from having one, including managing your money and making it count.

Cowboy hat - not surprised. That said, he has a point.

The closest I've come to insulting my parents online is by making jokes about how my mother doesn't know how the four remote controls for the cable, digital, DVR, TV respectively work.

My English knowledge is not fluent but I think he was saying something about similar accidents in the past and they ended with what you are saying. Also sometime ago his daughter had "last warning". So it seems that current accident was just "crown of punishment".

I understand he had warned his daughter, but my view of it is, he told her, he told her, he told her, he overreacted. Me? First time, you get warned, second time, I take the laptop for a week and restrict you to the house.

He kept talking so much that the reaction was probably that he wasn't going to do anything about it, then he took the laptop to do something for her and saw the letter. That's when he decided to do this.

My view is, he babied her way too much, and then he decided to do the worst thing possible. I don't see that as parenting, good or bad, I see that as forgetting his job and responsibilities as a parent and an adult.
I've vented about my dad quite a bit. Granted, he has a huge habit of overreacting poorly to anything that gets to him. But I've always done it in 'private', not someplace like facebook. Sometimes you just have to vent to keep from doing something stupid.

Well, the escalation of punishment seems to be part of the problem.

The daughter has to do household chores, which is perfectly okay. She gets _grounded_ if she doesn't do them, which is pretty restrictive and probably contributes to her feeling of being used for forced labor (which still wouldn't be justified on her part, but if her options are either doing chores or being grounded, then that's the assessment she'll arrive at). Her parents want her to look for a job, she apparently isn't interested. At the same time, her dad seems to be willing to upgrade her computer for free. Why?

Why not let her gradually earn the upgrade by doing household chores instead? That way she (a) would have a positive motivation for doing them (instead of just preventing to be grounded), and (b) might learn that work pays off and can be used to get things you want.

Given that he has a cowboy hat, is sitting in what appears to be a ranch and has a thick Southern accent, it would be something of an insult to stereotypes if he didn't know how many rounds were left.
Yeah, or be really, really really sure that your Facebook account is private. Because if you're not, and you're confirming people as friends like crazy, you're opening yourself to a whole world of trouble.

You have a valid point here, Sir. But, on the other hand, it could be also treated as preparation for "later" years, when she leaves home to her own, when she will not get paid for cleaning the house. Some things just must be done, whether you get salary or not for them - they are just normal part of everyone's life.

No, there's no way to tell on most such handguns how many rounds you have left (if you eject the clip you can tell as there's normally holes in the back of the clip that let you see). You saw how the slide came back and stayed locked in the back position when it was empty? That's how you tell, and you should still visually check before holstering or pointing at anything.

Revolvers are different, but most have a guard that keeps you from seeing inside the cylinder from the back.

You can count your rounds (you know how many your gun holds), but you always assume you're wrong, precisely because of what happened in the video: he miscounted. It's easy to do, especially under stress.

At any rate, always assume a gun is loaded until you check it, never trust anyone, not even your best friend or mentor to check it for you. If someone hands you a gun and you don't know how to check, point it away from everyone and ask them to show you how to check it.

As others have said, the dad's in IT, he has a drawl and wears a cowboy hat but that has to do with the region he lives in, he's not a hick.

I'd have videoed myself donating the laptop to charity, I wouldn't have shot it, but he probably had it as a spare in trade for work or something and just bought some copies of Windows and maybe some other utility software for it. I doubt he's out a bunch of money over the laptop.

The kid most likely is a brat, just showing off to her friends. Overreaction? To me, I wouldn't go on record stating a length of punishment like that because I don't issue punishments I won't stick to. Therefor I think long and hard about whether the punishment is appropriate or not before I do. Still, he's her parent and he's probably not a particularly bad parent as things go. Sounds like he was divorced (as he said "stepmother" as well as mother) and his ex seemed to be on board with him in this. It's pretty uncommon for exes to stick up for you over their kid unless the kid is really out of line.
It sounds like the reality was she was cleaning up after herself and barely at that. I suspect she just exaggerated the whole cleaning up after everyone thing. If she was really poor little Cinderella the family wouldn't have had a services trade with the gal who came in and cleaned.

You don't get some sort of special reward for cleaning up after yourself, that's what you do, tough shit, it's life.

The shooting of the laptop instead of just taking it away was a little over the top, but other than that this is not a big deal or cruel in any way.

That's a valid point as well, though imho forcing/punishing people isn't a very successful way of teaching when other options are available. In any case, I'd say that if the situation has escalated for enough for laptops to be shot at, it's more important to find solutions for the present proceedings in the family than worrying about whether the daughter will make her bed in her own flat in the far future. Imho. ;)

Well, you can teach multiple lessons, if she's smart she'll learn more from it. If she's rebellious she'll learn that she has limits and if you mess with the bull too much, you get the horns. This is a good lesson, others will only put up with so much shit before go after you, learning it at a bar in a few years when someone scrapes half her face off on the parking lot pavement is a much worse way to learn said lesson.

I'm taking this with a sizable grain of salt.

- a 15 year old girls laptop that hasn't been personalized at all ?
- guy fires 9 shots, no apparent reaction from neighbors, cops, school authorities or child welfare ?
- shoot the laptop rather than crush it with farm machinery, drop it in water or confiscate it and make her 'buy' it back ?

Seems almost tailor made to become a viral hit.

How do you know this wasn't the situation already? Maybe I missed something and I don't want to rewatch it again, but he said "pay you for chores?You want a a new laptop, you want a new phone etc but you don't want to look for a job". Since she has no job, and he just spent $130 on parts for her laptop, I assume he buys her other stuff that she asks for. Her "pay" is the stuff that she asks for