All this talk of Gibsons and tube amps! This is a present for a maybe beginner! There's nothing wrong with todays cheap electrics - unforgiving you say, well maybe that's a good idea for a beginner, they can hear when they are not fretting a note correctly or a stray finger is hitting the wrong string! I gave my daughter a cheap Yamaha electric and a small marshall 15fx amp - total cost under £200! Yes if you shop around there are plenty of good deals these days.
Remember this is somebody who likes rock music, they can have some fun with distortion and effects as well as learning. When you turn the amp to clean sound and low volume there is not much difference from an acoustic. That along with the easier action, the headphone socket and the fun effects puts it way above a cheap crap cation acoustic which can be murder on a begginer's fingers. Who said that you had to learn strumming first? Maybe for a folkie I would have thought for an electric guitar that musical scales were the first thing to learn especially simple pentatonic stuff which can have a rock enthusiast playing simple solos fairly quickly. The when they decide that they want to continue maybe investing in a more expensive acoustic. Point is a cheaper electric WILL be more fun that a cheap acoustic