Investigators now say 18-year-old Bradley Scott Sayer walked into the Butte County Library in Chico, California, with a plan. He wanted to kill as many people as possible.
As I posted previously, Sayer reportedly entered the library, walked around briefly, left, and then returned with a shotgun. According to prosecutors, he was looking for a populated place where he could carry out an attack. He shot and killed 46-year-old Jacob Cody Hull and 74-year-old Robert Johnson. A 7-year-old girl who was with Hull was also injured after escaping through a shattered window.
Sayer appeared in court this past Thursday, where he was ordered held without bail on two counts of murder. During that appearance, he also flashed a hand gesture associated with white supremacist groups. On its own, the gesture does not prove everything about someone’s beliefs, but context matters. And in this case, the context is what investigators have already uncovered about his online activity and his obsession with previous mass shooters.
From the beginning, authorities pointed to a connection between Sayer and Columbine. He reportedly wore a shirt with the words “Natural Selection” written on it, a direct reference to the shirt worn by Eric Harris during Columbine. Investigators also said Sayer had gone deep into online communities centered around Columbine and other mass shootings.
Now we know just how deep that rabbit hole went.
According to the Butte County District Attorney, Sayer started falling into online communities that glorified mass shootings about four years ago. That means he was around 14 when he became involved in the darker corners of the internet, where some people treat mass shooters like celebrities instead of the cowards they are. So in roughly four years, no one noticed his online activity or couldn’t be bothered to intervene.
Not only did Sayer dress as one of the Columbine shooters on the day of the attack, but prosecutors say he also recorded a video explaining his plan to go to the library and kill as many people as possible. Investigators also found what they called a disturbing journal documenting what qualifies as his thoughts.
This evidence points toward someone spending years absorbing a violent fantasy and eventually trying to turn that fantasy into a bloody reality.
Authorities also revealed where the guns came from. Prosecutors say Sayer had access to three firearms from a bedroom closet at his father’s home: two .22 caliber rifles and a 20-gauge pump-action shotgun. His father reportedly had a gun safe, but he didn’t know if the guns were actually stored inside it.
Again, a gun safe is only useful if the guns are actually locked inside it. Saying you are a‘responsible gun owner’™ does not magically make you one. The responsibility part is the part where you know who can access your weapons and where they are stored. IT IS NOT THAT COMPLICATED!
For over two decades, I have been saying that these types of attacks are almost always Columbine copycats. The clothes, the symbolism, the language, and the obsession with being remembered. The blueprint has been sitting there since 1999, and lowlifes keep trying to recreate it.
But this has been going on for so long now; the Columbiners are now copying each other.
Sayer’s attack has a lot in common with the 2025 shooting at the Jackson County Public Library in Seymour, Indiana, involving Emiliano Cuevas-Bravo. Both attackers targeted libraries. Both were obsessed with Columbine. And both wanted to create their own version of a previous massacre.
And both had one thing in common that inadvertently saved lives. Neither of them actually knew how to use their guns.
Cuevas-Bravo loaded a shotgun shell backward, causing his gun to jam after his first shot. Sayer, according to prosecutors, was loading his shotgun one shell at a time because he did not understand how to use it properly. The death toll could have been much higher if Sayer knew how to operate the shotgun.
Two people who wanted to commit mass murder were stopped in part because of their own incompetence. But that does not change the reality. Even someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing can still kill people.
Two people are dead because Sayer wanted to imitate a group of cowards he found online.
If you are sitting online obsessing over mass shooters, collecting their writings, romanticizing them, and convincing yourself that committing an act of cowardice will somehow make you important, it absolutely will not.
You are not going to become famous. You are not going to become some legendary figure. You will either be admired by a tiny group of other internet troglodytes who are just as pathetic, or you will eventually become another name in a database nobody remembers.
A lot of these shootings do not even make national headlines anymore. The attention cycle moves on when another tragedy happens. Another name replaces yours, then the coward who thought they were creating a legacy becomes forgotten.
The victims are the ones who should be remembered.
Not the loser who decided to become another copy of a copy of a copy.
(Source)
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