mass attack
A descriptive term in Danish usage, not a separate offence in the Penal Code
A mass attack is a violent attack — including a shooting, bombing, biological attack or other form of violence — directed at a large number of people or at a location with many potential victims at once. Under Danish law, the term is not defined as an independent criminal-law category and does not appear as a specific provision in the Danish Penal Code (straffeloven) or in other Danish legal sources.
In legal practice, acts commonly described as mass attacks are assessed and prosecuted under the specific penal provisions covering the conduct actually carried out. This may involve homicide or attempted homicide, aggravated violence, arson, the use of explosives or — where the purpose of the act is to create fear in the population or destabilise the fundamental structures of society — terrorism.
In cases such as the Amerithrax attacks in the United States in 2001, where anthrax spores were sent by post to media outlets and politicians, or the terrorist attack on the synagogue in Halle in 2019, the term mass attack is used to describe the broad and unspecific targeting of a group of people or a symbolic location. Common to such cases is that the perpetrator does not necessarily seek to strike named individuals, but a category of people or society as a whole.
From a criminological perspective, mass attacks differ from targeted individual killings by their systematic or ideologically motivated character and by their potentially unlimited harmful effect. In assessments under terrorism law, the breadth of the intended harm and the political or ideological motive are central elements. The designation mass attack is used primarily as a descriptive and analytical concept in legal literature, journalism and criminology — not as a technical legal term with its own sentencing ranges or procedural rules.
