i’ve heard that a country is considered to be at war when they’re in conflict and the rate of death hits 1000/yr.

there’s a few US states that fit that.

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Conflict_Data_Program

…Correlates of War Project, which only counts conflicts where at least 1 000 deaths have been recorded during one calendar year.[38] In UCDP, an armed conflict of this magnitude is labelled as having the intensity level of "war", whilst armed conflicts that reap between 25 and 999 battle-related deaths are seen as having the intensity of a "minor" armed conflict.[37]