SALT LAKE CITY — There has been a string of high-profile shootings in Utah over the last few months, which can feel concerning to all who live in the state. And while 2025 gun violence and homicide rates are still being finalized, data from the last few years show Utah is a relatively safe place to live.
Utah’s homicide rate peaked in 2020 at 3.1 per 100,000 residents. That was a 10-year high, according to data from the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. That time was part of a national trend, with crimes driven by social and pandemic-related unrest.
The state's homicide rate declined in 2021 and 2022, before ticking up slightly in 2023 and again in 2024 to 2.6 per 100,000 residents. The state commission attributed the increase to several high-profile familicides in the state in those years.
A familicide is when multiple close family members are killed by a relative, followed by the relative’s suicide.
Overall, the average homicide rate in Utah is quite a bit lower than U.S. rates.
So what about gun violence? Data from the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University shows the gun death rate in Utah was slightly higher in 2023 than the national average at 14.31 per 100,000 people, but those numbers are driven more by suicide deaths than by homicides.
Between 2018 and 2022, just 13.1 percent of the state's firearm-related deaths were homicides, according to a 2024 report from the Department of Health and Human Services.
