Ok now be warned some people may not like this :) Not sure if I would have shot it though thinking a donation to a local womans shelter or orphanage
http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/10/1037...
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Comments
Intimidation and assault
This isn't just abuse, it's criminal assault. Using a lethal weapon to intimidate someone is felonious assault in most jurisdictions.
Suppose you cut someone off in traffic and they got out at the next stop sign and fired eight bullets into your tires. Just because he is in a family relationship with the victim does not give him the right to do this. Even if he is the legal owner of the laptop, it still doesn't. If your employer took shots at the company car you had just driven, you would have a case for assault.
Shooting anyone's possession is not discipline, it is a threat. And doing it eight times is underlining the threat, and making a video of it is shouting it from a rooftop. This is a credible violent threat to a person's life.
The girl should go to a women's shelter immediately. No reasonable person can escape the conclusion that this man would shoot his daughter if the situation escalated. The man should face trial and possibly go to jail for 3 to 6 months and possibly lose custody of his child. A lethal weapon is NOT a tool of parenting. Hand guns have two legitimate uses, target sports and self-defense. This was neither. If he did this within the limits of nearly any city in the US and most counties, he is also guilty of illegal discharge of a firearm.
I can believe that the man had good intentions but if his self-control is so weak he thinks using a lethal weapon to intimidate his child is wise, he needs to be disciplined himself.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
It's frightening...
...that there were folks commenting on the article that saw no problem with this. One fellow pointed out that the video included "only" a few seconds of the shooting in the midst of several minutes, as if watching her father brandishing and shooting a gun "for a few second" in her presence to prove a point was acceptable. It's appalling to think that even carrying a gun in NYC brings a mandatory prison sentence of 18 months but this guy will probably get weekend community service and anger management classes if anything at all. Even his look in the picture is frightening.
I don't know what the girl wrote on Facebook that was disrespectful, but if his anger is culminating in shooting a gun in the home, what kind of behavior has HE displayed to this point that would cause the girl to write what she did. This guy is out of control and one step away from a manslaughter charge.
Love, Andrea Lena
What Happened
What happened to deleting her facebook account .I saw this and it was OK until he shot the lap top 8 times.Their is no defence for this but she did piss him off by asking to be paid for doing chores and other things,calling her parents out on grounding her. VERY SCARY that's my 2 cents
Grounding the kids
There has been much discussion about corporal punishment, but grounding kids or taking away privileges should not even be debated. If the girl is misusing her computer, take it away. He did it once, and it didn't seem to work. I guess she's lost her laptop for good.
Personally, I wouldn't destroy a valuable item. I would give it away or use it myself. That's especially true if I had just put time, effort, and money into it. Also, I like to keep it around and so that the child in question can earn it back. I have had my children ask me what they could do to earn back a DS or Wii or computer or whatever.
As far as how he did it -- well, it gets the point across. He could have used an axe or ran it over with his 4x4, or maybe used a chainsaw, but he decided to use a handgun. Eh... it's a tool just like anything else, and approximately as lethal as the above mentioned toys.
There was no threat of bodily harm, implicit or expressed. While some might say that the kid needs a good spanking, she is probably a bit old for corporal punishment. Grounding and/or loss of privileges is the way to go. Some type of reward/consequence system would be better, of course.
Of course, I have no idea what style he uses in the upbringing and guidance of his children. I also don't know if that was really her computer, or a broken one that he picked up somewhere.
Remedial Parenting for Complete Arseholes!
I am thinking of starting a short course to help "parents" who have made a complete mess of raising their child to teens and then expect them somehow to be models of good behaviour.
This idiot has obviously spoiled his poor daughter for umpteen years, given in to her every wish and whim, ruined her by turning her into a selfish, rude, bad-mouthed brat, and suddenly he thinks by behaving as seen in his youtube episode he can bully the poor kid into suddenly changing her ways ?
Respect goes both ways, and respect has to be Earned
Also very bad behaviour is his disregard for the environment - he throws a cigarete end onto the grass, as well as his screwed up paper printout of daughter-darling's offensive Facebook Message. I hope he does not display his unhealthy nicotine addiction in front of his daughter BTW, if he wants to fund the already state subsidized drug traffickers of the tobacco industry and wreck his own health, as an adult to smoke he is still not breaking the law until the US Govt reclassifies nicotine as a Dangerous and Illegal, Addictive Drug - I hope they will do that soon ! But it is a bad example of unwanted and rude behaviour he gives by filming himself indulging in it.
Wanton destruction of an expensive item was bad form - it could instead have been sold or given to someone in more need and more deserving. Shooting it was a typically Yank response - the RoW already sees Yanks as people who think everything can be solved by shooting someone or something, and this bit of evidence does nothing top dispel that impression !
I think he does not deserve a daughter, and with parents like him no wonder she is the way she is. He should be locked up!
Briar
Parenting
I won't argue with your assessment on smoking or littering. Of course, I suspect that it's his property, so he can litter if he wants (as long as the litter doesn't contaminate the surrounding property.
Neither do I disagree with anyone's assessment about him being a redneck. As far as I'm concerned, there's good and bad there.
Nor is this discussion about how the rest of the world sees us ornery Americans and our distaste for victim disarmament laws -- though I think that his use of a firearm instead of, say, a sledge hammer, caused most of the negative reactions.
As for respect being earned, and all that stuff, it is very true. The problem is that kids tend to be disrespectful at that age, no matter how good the parent is. If she has as few chores as he claims, she probably is spoiled.
Hey, teenagers tend to get an attitude. There may be a few families that are so perfect that all the kids are little angels, but I never met any. Kids work on earning their PHD on manipulating Mom and Dad and getting everything they can. Eventually, they mature -- sometimes. I know that I have some nieces that turned out very well, and I hope that my own kids do just as well. Meanwhile, My wife and I have lots of work to do -- as do all parents who are in the middle of the process of trying to turn a totally dependant and self-centered baby into a loving and mature adult. It takes a couple decades to do that, and I doubt if there are any parents who have not despaired at getting the job done right.
I suspect that the girl involved will grow up OK. Spats such as you saw on the video are pretty common. How often does a teen yell "I hate you!" at Mom or Dad? In this case, she had her tantrum on a public forum. Her dad replied on a public forum. He chose to affect an over-the-top redneck style. Is he really like that? I don't know. Did he really shoot her laptop, or did he shoot one that was already dead? I don't know. Would sending him to jail benefit his daughter or the rest of his family in any way? Definitely not.
I agree...
He should not go to jail for this. However, there do need to be consequences. Just like there needs to be consequences set by parents for the juveniles in their care, there needs to be consequences set by the government for "big kids" who get out of control.
IMO... He should get mandatory counseling and perhaps something along the lines of community service.
He obviously doesn't know how to parent effectively without dropping to the teenage level himself, and he needs help learning to do that, and needs to be made fully aware that acting like a teenage kid as a grown adult is not acceptable.
There are far more effective parenting models out there than over the top ABUSIVE retaliatory punishment. "Corporal" punishment, or, as I prefer to call it "retaliatory" punishment, never works.
Abigail Drew.
Violence
I have a problem with needless violence against people. Things can be replaced. Still, it was a waste of perfectly good hardware.
I agree about changing the password on all her accounts. I think I would also keep an eye on her friends' accounts, since it would be easy for her to create a new account and friend all her friends.
But getting into a fight like that with your child is, ultimately, a losing proposition. I don't want to control my children's behavior. I want them to control their own behavior. The idea is not to aggressively restrict them, but to teach them to control themselves.
I tell my children that if they don't control themselves, someone else will have to control them. For adults, this ultimately means jail.
When the kids are ignoring us or failing to do what they are supposed to do, we take away whatever is between them and what they are supposed to be doing. That is generally the entertainment center.
The father in the video, after taking everything away, should take joy in giving it all back a piece at a time as she earns it. I know that I like rewarding my kids for a job well done.
Take joy in giving it all back.
Agreed! The reward end of the consequence/reward system is so much more rewarding to the individual who has to try to guide another persons behavior.
And yes, the idea is to try to teach people to control themselves. Sometimes, unfortunately, however, control over them must be exerted by another.
I would PREFER to let natural consequences teach people the errors of their ways, but, unfortunately, that doesn't always work.
Abigail Drew.
Sorry, you're quite wrong here
"There was no threat of bodily harm, implicit or expressed."
Your boss comes up to you and says, "You've been using company computers to surf the web, no more." Pulls out a gun and shoots your computer.
Are you afraid for your life? If you have any sense, you are.
When anyone violently destroys someone else's possessions, courts have ruled over and over that this is a credible threat to do bodily harm. Otherwise, why not simply give it away as you said. And case studies show that it often escalates.
Violence as an expression of discipline must be carefully circumscribed. This man went over the line.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
The Boss
If my boss discharged a firearm in the building, I would conclude that he's acting in a dangerous fashion. That, in itself, would give me cause to worry.
If he sent me a video of him destroying the computer, whether it was with a gun or a pound of dynamite, I would wonder at his wanton destruction of valuable property. If it was his, I would just shake my head. If it was mine, he would owe me a new computer.
I don't think I would work for him much longer because destroying the thing is irrational behavior. Actually, if I wrote a disrespectful post on facebook, I expect that I would get fired.
Ask yourself this: If the dad had used a sledge hammer instead of a .45, would it have made any difference about how you feel? What if her dad had tossed it into the back of a garbage truck just before the operator pulled the lever that compresses all the garbage together?
Like I said, I don't think he should have destroyed it. My wife says that the right thing to do would be to remove all of her data from it and give it away -- or better yet, drive her to the resale shop or shelter or whatever and have her hand it over.
Personally, I'm not a fan of such permanent solutions. I take it away for a while, then let the child earn it back. If the lesson hasn't been learned, I can take it away again.
No difference.
Violent behavior is violent behavior is violent behavior. Even if he just smashed it against the ground with his bare hands and a lot of force, I would still argue he needs counseling and some other consequence to be made aware that acting that way is inexcusable.
Personally... I agree with your wife on what her consequences should have been. Though I'd take it a step further and change all her passwords and lock her out of all her online accounts until she earned the rights to them back. She'd have to earn each thing back individually, eventually including another computer. Eventually. That'd be the last thing restored, and only after she's shown to me she can behave responsibly with everything else. Until then, she'd only be allowed on things with my supervision, or the supervision of another adult I feel is responsible enough to supervise her.
Abigail Drew.
Not a bit
"If the dad had used a sledge hammer instead of a .45, would it have made any difference about how you feel? What if her dad had tossed it into the back of a garbage truck just before the operator pulled the lever that compresses all the garbage together?"
A threat of violence is a threat of violence; assault is assault. Again, ask yourself if both people involved were adults with one in position of authority over the other. The father just threatened to kill his daughter by his actions and such threats are carried out WAY too often.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Another source
Same incident on fox news
There's mention of child services interviewing the daughter. Hopefully they can sort things out.