California cannot ban gun owners from having detachable magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez won’t take effect immediately. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, has already filed a notice to appeal the ruling. The ban is likely to remain in effect while the case is still pending.
This is the second time Benitez has struck down California’s law banning certain types of magazines. The first time he struck it down — way back in 2017 — an appeals court ended up reversing his decision.
Point of fact: child pornography is obscene–and not covered by 1A–even if no real people are harmed. I’d have to dig up the law (I think it dates to the mid-90s), but it’s pretty broad. Lolicon may be illegal by itself, even though drawings don’t generally cause direct harm. At least one person has been convicted of obscenity for comics, albeit not lolicon. It is *likely that even AI-generated child pornography, even though it wouldn’t involve real children, would end up being ruled obscene.
Personally, I would take your position; images and depictions of child pornography that don’t involve actual minors should not be obscene and therefore illegal, regardless of how distasteful and repellent they are.
Interesting - I was not aware of that. I’ll have to dig up the law and related rulings - I suspect the judges’ opinions on the matter would help clarify the reasoning for arriving at such a stance and would help me understand if, say, they might be due to mimicry of that actual harm and actual abuse, etc.
I appreciate that highlight.
I truly don’t know. In the case I linked to–and it’s just the Wikipedia article–SCOTUS declined to hear the case. So it’s good case law at the moment.
Maybe if someone could get an obscene comic banned that was drawing about Nazis, our current SCOTUS would overturn it in favor of 1A rights…
Real child pornography should only be illegal because of the harms it represents. The text of the First Amendment would clearly protect victimless obscenity.