Would it have drawn such a wide response if the guy just grounded his daughter forbidding her to use a laptop or giving it to charity? I doubt it. So what is it all really about?

He seems to be a pretty strict parent (at least from a teenager's point of view), on the other hand his demands are not unreasonable, even if some parents demand less. Shooting a laptop is extreme, and a waste of a perfectly good laptop (*sighs* ), but as a person who actually paid for it he is in his right, sort of. The girl's post is whiny and disrespectful, but teens rant about their parents all the time, so I'm not going there - we know to little of the situation to judge her character.

So.. we have a guy who "punished" his daughter for talking disrespectfully about her family behind his back. It's not really sensational. ))
BTW, why there was a need for a social worker's visit? It's just scary how the state pokes its nose into everything there. =|