‘If this bill passes, we’re moving’: How a Colorado veteran became a political voice online

By RMV Staff | Rocky Mountain Voice

A Colorado Springs defense worker who never wanted to be in politics now says the only place left to win back gun rights in this state is a federal courtroom — and that the window is open right now.

Nicholas, the veteran behind the YouTube channels Big Timber Lodge and Big Timber Armory, told Heidi Ganahl on the latest episode of Unleashed that he spent more than a year building legal packages for the U.S. Department of Justice, asking it to sue Colorado over its firearm laws. In early May, the DOJ filed suit.

Colorado’s gun restrictions moved faster than gun owners could fight them in state court, where judges are appointed under Democrat governors. Now the Trump administration’s Justice Department, not a Colorado plaintiff, is suing the state — and gun owners believe the change in venue changes their odds.

From a firearm channel to the Capitol

Nick built a small firearm channel on YouTube, nothing political. Then SB25-003, the bill that became Colorado’s ban on certain semiautomatic weapons, moved through the Capitol, and he gave his wife an ultimatum.

“If this bill passes, we’re moving,” Nick said. “I’m not going to stay in a state that’s going to restrict my Second Amendment right. I’m a 9-year veteran. I’ve had, you know, brothers in arms die to defend the Constitution and our freedoms.”

He testified against the bill, sitting across from Democrat senators Julie Gonzales and Tom Sullivan, then went home and recorded a video that took off. His wife, a multi-generational Coloradan, did not want to leave, so he asked to turn his platform into an organizing tool instead.

“If it does pass and it goes into effect and we have to move, I can at least look at you honestly in the eye and say I tried my hardest to keep us in Colorado,” he said.

SB25-003 passed and Governor Jared Polis signed it. But Nick counts one vote as proof the pressure worked. His group built a recall website targeting Democrat Sen. Tony Exum and published it the day before the Senate vote. Exum, a sponsor of the bill, voted no.

Why the federal lawsuits change the math

Nick calls the DOJ work his “crowning jewel” — more than a year with a contact who walked him through civil-rights-era statutes, a trip to Washington, a call with the Justice Department and a complaint filed against Colorado.

“Finally now we’re starting to see lawsuits being brought against Colorado from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice,” he said, naming Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon as the official driving it.

The public record backs the timeline. On May 5, the Justice Department sued Denver over its assault-weapons ban; the next day it sued the state over its 15-round magazine limit. Both cases run through the Civil Rights Division’s Second Amendment Section under Dhillon. Attorney General Phil Weiser has called the federal action a dangerous overreach and says the state will defend the magazine law as a public-safety measure.

Nick’s argument is about where the fight happens. Colorado gun challenges have run through state courts and a state Supreme Court he describes as appointed by liberal governors and nearly impossible to move. A DOJ civil-rights suit goes to federal court — the same arena where a federal court struck down a Washington, D.C., magazine ban.

He also walked through the cost of the new licensing system. Parks and Wildlife set the firearm owner identification card fee at $52. Nick says that number hides the real one once the required 12 hours of instructor training, a Colorado Bureau of Investigation background check and a sheriff’s background check are added in.

“When it’s all said and done, you might be looking at close to a thousand dollars just to be able to get a state issued license so that you can exercise your second amendment right,” he said. He argues the Supreme Court should treat licensing schemes like that as a poll tax — a fee that blocks a constitutional right.

By his read, the pressure is already showing. He says lawmakers backed off gun bills planned for this session, and that a politician told him Democrats are weighing a last-minute measure to let the state drop laws facing costly federal challenges without running them back through the legislature. That bill, he acknowledged, is not confirmed.

“Now we have the politicians that hate our constitutional rights on the ropes,” Nick said. “They’re backpedaling and they have nowhere else to go.”

The cost shift: immigration and healthcare

The gun fight is one piece of a wider frustration for Ganahl — a sense the state has moved away from the people who built it. That carried into immigration and healthcare. Nick pointed to Cover All Coloradans, projected at roughly $10 million a year and now running far higher by his account, and to OmniSalud, which lets people without legal status buy insurance.

“The majority of illegals getting health insurance pay no premium,” Nick said. “That is actually coming from our taxes.”

He cited census figures he attributes to the state: an 85% share of net population growth from 2023 to 2024 from foreign-born residents, then a 71% drop in arrivals and an estimated loss of 12,000 people the next year, after stricter federal enforcement returned under President Trump. The state data, he noted, does not break out who held visas or green cards — the gap in his own argument.

For Ganahl, the cost has a name: Patty Fox, a scheduled speaker at Rocky Mountain Voice’s Freedom Festival in June, whose daughter was severely injured by an illegal immigrant and who, Ganahl said, cannot get the financial help she needs for her daughter’s full-time care.

“It’s infuriating that we’re leaving the people behind that are generational Coloradans, Americans, just the people who have fought so hard for this state,” Ganahl said. She added that she supports legal immigration, and that friends of hers who came the right way do not like what is happening either.

Grassroots before the midterms

Asked how conservatives fix the divide before the midterms, Nick pointed to a Washington Post piece arguing this will be the year Colorado Republicans throw away their chance to take back the state through infighting. His answer was to start small.

“Get involved at your local level first,” Nick said. “Get involved with your school board, your county board, your city mayoral race … that is how we change it from the grassroots and up into the bigger politics.”

Ganahl closed on the line she returns to often with RMV listeners. “You are the leader you’re waiting for,” she said. “We’ve got to get involved at the precinct level, get to know your neighbors. That’s how we’re going to win back Colorado one neighborhood at a time.”

For Nick, the fight is no longer about one bill or one bad vote. It is about whether the federal courts move fast enough, and whether conservatives organize well enough at the neighborhood level, to change Colorado before the next governor and attorney general are decided.

The full episode of Unleashed with Heidi Ganahl is on Spotify, YouTube and Rumble. Nick can be reached through the Big Timber Lodge and Big Timber Armory channels, and on X, Rumble and Kick.