Road rage, sports rage and now yard rage

What makes human beings willing to give up everything that's valuable to them to settle a score? When did people become so inept at discussion, negotiation, calm reasoning that the only way they know to resolve a conflict is for somebody to die?

A Clermont County jury doesn't have to answer these tough questions when it decides the fate of Charles Martin. All they have to determine is if the 67-year-old Batavia resident shot his 15-year-old neighbor after exchanging profanities with the boy and threatening him for walking across Martin's lawn. Police say Martin waited more than three hours for Larry Mugrage Jr. to return home and then killed him with two blasts of a shotgun.

Martin's lawyer blames it on "systematic harassment of an old man," and perhaps bad blood on both sides played into the tragedy. But when did human beings become so devoid of inner discipline or moral sanctions that they couldn't turn their cheek to youthful rudeness and simply let a bad moment pass by?

His attorney said Martin waited all his life to purchase his modest home, and was particular about it and his yard. If he is convicted of aggravated murder, he won't return to it for at least 20 years.

What breeds rage so great that it consumes the very things people like Charles Martin hold dear?