Homicides accounted for more than 24,500 deaths in the United States in 2020.  The four-state Southwestern region accounted for 3,295 homicide deaths in 2020, which was about 13.4% of the total number of homicide deaths in the U.S. that year.  At 7.7 deaths per 100,000 population, in 2020 the homicide rate in the Southwestern U.S. was slightly higher than the national homicide rate of 7.5 deaths per 100,000 population.  A closer examination of state-level data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a unit of the CDC, provides the following details about homicide rates in the Southwestern U.S.:

Homicide Rates in the Southwestern U.S.

State	Deaths	Population	Death Rate*
AZ	525	7,421,401	7.1
NM	216	2,106,319	10.3
OK	342	3,980,783	8.6
TX	2,212	29,360,759	7.5
Region	3,295	42,869,262	7.7
U.S.	24,576	329,484,123	7.5

(*) number of homicide deaths per 100,000 population

Report Period: 2020

Source: CDC Wonder. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999-2020 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2021. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 1999-2020, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. Accessed on May 4, 2022