A North Carolina man, frustrated with his teenage daughter, employed some Wild West justice recently. The 15-year-old girl had posted a letter on Facebook complaining about her parents and all the chores they make her do. It was some pretty rough stuff and not meant for her parents to read. But her father works in IT and managed to gain access to her page.

Seething with anger, he posted a video on her Facebook page in which he read her letter aloud and provided counterpoint to her complaints. The video ended with a bang — nine of them, in fact! In a fury of digital destruction, the father emptied his handgun into his daughter’s laptop. Read more here. 

But did his hollow points make a hollow point?

A few decades ago a frustrated father might have ripped his daughter’s princess phone out of the wall after discovering a nasty entry in her diary. The underlying issues seem to be the same. But these days, a family problem can be shared with the world in an instant, and all of us get to sit in judgment.

• Was there a better way for the father to get his point across?
• How do you think the father felt after doing this?
• How do you think the daughter reacted? How would you react?
• What does this say about the expectation of privacy on the internet (or in a personal diary, for that matter)?
• As an aside, what sort of message is the father sending his daughter by smoking throughout his video?