In the heat of South Carolina’s gubernatorial contest, Attorney General Alan Wilson’s reported outreach to lawmakers on behalf of a Planned Parenthood-endorsed judicial hopeful has reignited questions about where he truly stands when the culture war collides with constitutional rights. The calls, placed last year, reportedly urged Republican legislators to back a candidate whose financial and ideological ties run straight to the nation’s largest abortion provider—an organization that has never hidden its hostility to the individual right to keep and bear arms. For gun owners watching the race, the episode is less about one judgeship and more about whether Wilson’s pro-2A rhetoric will hold once he trades the AG’s office for the governor’s mansion and the pressure to court suburban moderates intensifies.
The deeper concern for the firearms community is institutional: state judges increasingly shape the post-Bruen landscape, ruling on sensitive-place restrictions, permit-to-purchase schemes, and magazine-capacity limits that never reach the federal appellate courts. A single Planned Parenthood-aligned justice on South Carolina’s bench could tilt close cases for a generation, giving anti-gun litigants a friendly ear before cases ever leave the state. Wilson’s willingness to lobby for such a candidate suggests either tone-deafness or a calculation that Second Amendment voters will remain loyal regardless—an assumption that has already cost other Republican candidates in purple suburbs.
For 2A advocates, the takeaway is straightforward: primary voters still have leverage. They can demand clearer commitments on judicial selection, insist on public questionnaires about carry reciprocity and constitutional carry enforcement, and withhold support from any candidate who treats the gun-rights bloc as a foregone conclusion. South Carolina’s open primary offers a narrow window to vet Wilson’s record before the general-election machinery locks in. If the AG’s team views Planned Parenthood’s judicial picks as acceptable coalition partners, gun owners have every reason to ask what other constitutional principles might be negotiable once the votes are counted.
