The California brief sums up the position of California in a document that (for once) is brief and concise. The CA brief was written before the 9th Circuit decided on an
en banc hearing of
Nordyke.
California asks that SCOTUS grant cert, that SCOTUS find that the RKBA
is incorporated against the states and that SCOTUS provide some scope of the right so that states can understand was constitutes "reasonable regulation".
From California's perspective, since the state constitution lacks an analog to the 2A right, the state is (theoretically) able to ban the possession of any and all firearms. Unless the RKBA applies to the states through incorporation, that is.
California is asking SCOTUS to incorporate to provide a uniform right to all U.S. citizens (thank you AG Brown!). But it is also telling SCOTUS to define some limitations of what the states can or cannot do. They also want The Court to establish if
strict scrutiny is the proper standard of review (or some other level).
Quote:
In affirming that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms, the Court in Heller noted that its ruling permitted reasonable regulation of firearms.
:
But the Court declined to elaborate on the extent of the government’s authority to regulate firearms or to establish a standard of review applicable to asserted Second-Amendment infringements.
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If The Court can articulate some broad language to define some of the limits to state regulatory powers and/or define what kinds of regulations the states
may use, it will save a lot of time, grief and expensive litigation.
The difficult part would be for The Court to come up with a workable "scope" of the right without having to reverse itself in the future.