'Flash Point' Killings: Murder Most Casual

"A lot of it is nonsense," O'Keefe said. "One woman stabbed another because she wore a dress without asking. One gentleman was shot to death in a duplex because his son took laundry soap that didn't belong to him."

Lt. Robert Nealon, head of the homicide squad in Prince George's, said: "All these people are fighting over these stupid, little things. Now you're adding a gun to the picture, and it makes it all lethal."

Guns were used in 82 percent of last year's homicides.

"When I was a kid, a lot of these deaths would have been fistfights," said State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey. "Now they're turning into gunfights, and someone gets killed or hurt seriously."

Hubert Williams is president of the Washington-based Police Foundation, a nonprofit research and training group. "In previous generations," Williams said, "I think our tolerance level was much greater. Someone might say something, and it's ignored or it ends with a fight. But today, the gun is so prevalent, I think it's become much more acceptable in certain communities to use the weapon first and ask questions later."

Timothy A. Dimoff, a former Ohio police officer, says in his book, "Life Rage," that today's teenagers and people in their twenties and early thirties have been bombarded with violence all their lives through video games, music, music videos, television shows and mainstream movies.

"They've become desensitized to the results of violence," said Dimoff, who runs a security and investigative firm.

Time after time, that kind of senseless rage has been on display in Prince George's.

In yet another instance, two men lost their tempers, drew guns and simultaneously became killers and victims.

Jermaine Berry, 23, and Edward Huff, 27, were next-door neighbors for a while in the Chapel Oaks neighborhood, near Fairmount Heights. They didn't like each other.

Huff would complain when Berry's pit bull would escape from his yard. Berry didn't like Huff parking stolen cars on the street, police said.

By last summer, Berry had moved to Hyattsville, but his family stayed in a house on Farmingdale Avenue.