" The yankee liberal owners of the State newspaper were obviously stunned, rather than any "educators" as suggested by the title."
Since when is any newspaper or democrat for gun rights? It's always the same story. There's a repub fighting for Second Amendment rights and some dem fighting against it, just like in this article.
I grew up in South Carolina with The State newspaper. It wasn't always a liberal rag. Anyway, the very first guncontrol laws ever passed in South Carolina came from republicans. South Carolina republicans ain't much of anything to brag about usually. They're usually indistinguishable from their pals across the aisle, just like in most other states.