Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if you'd read the memo you'd be able to answer that question :) It goes on about it for a bit, but here's a good passage: "There are other insidious dynamics of this crime, discounted by Mr. Hansen: the impact of the content on the viewer, and the impact the collectors have on each other. In his article, Mr. Hansen quotes Mr. Stabenow, who essentially suggests that child pornography laws are wrongly concerned t…
Actually, no you wouldn't. You'd be able to answer why Alexandra Gelber, Assistant Deputy Chief of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, thinks violence/violent imagery is different than sexual abuse/sexual imagery. The only citations are to law (both statutory and case law) but in a memo arguing for the justification of the law, citing the law is begging the question. She does make reference to a number of s…
On the other hand, violence is not illegal to depict, and there are many professionals who are experts in simulating violence without actually causing harm. This results in violence and rape in this country going down. If violence was hard to simulate, and the only way to create images of violence was to hurt or possibly kill someone, I think we'd be much more likely to treat images of violence in the same way as we treat images of child abuse.
In the end, I think your argument may hold for fabricated or animated images of child abuse, but fails to do so for images of actual abuse. AFAIK, most images in circulation now are of actual children, and as such, we prosecute all images as if they were.