Laptop-Shooting Aftermath: Dad Gets 1K Emails a Day

Tommy Jordan, daughter Hannah Marie appear on 'Today'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 7, 2012 10:00 AM CST

Life has "changed a lot" since Tommy Jordan shot up his daughter's laptop and gained immediate infamy, and the dad says his family has been under "a lot of scrutiny" for the past month. But despite the fact that, "in hindsight," it may have been better for him to rebuke his daughter in private, he says he can't change the past: "I did what I did, and I stood behind what I did. I still do," he told Matt Lauer this morning on Today. Daughter Hannah Marie says she knows her original Facebook rant against her parents, which sparked the unconventional form of discipline, was wrong. As for the punishment, "I think he overreacted a little bit, but I understand," she said.

Jordan says he is currently receiving around 1,000 emails per day related to the incident, and though more of the messages are good than bad, there is "a large amount of bad mail." Lauer noted that a Today poll showed the vast majority of respondents agreed with Jordan; though Lauer himself does not, he called Jordan "a very thoughtful, very caring, very intelligent, very articulate guy." Jordan's wife, Amy, agrees, saying that some video viewers assumed they were "completely uneducated country people," but "that's not the case." Things have improved between Jordan and his daughter—"We were laughing about it soon afterward," she said—but she's still grounded and lacking a laptop, he said. But he does have a surprise for her when she gets a new computer: her hard drive, which he saved before shooting the laptop. (More YouTube stories.)

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