The Young Democrats and the College Republicans debated for the second time this election season on Thursday, focusing primarily on human rights and social issues.

The first topic was the censorship of free speech on college campuses. The debate came the day after the College Republicans constructed a wall on the Glenn Terrell Friendship Mall as a symbol of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s immigration policy, with hundreds of students counter protesting.

Connor Scott of the College Republicans said he believes college campuses should be a melting pot for everyone’s ideas. He said 30 years ago, colleges were known as places where free speech and ideas flourished, but these days it is being diminished. People are too easily offended by the exercise of free speech, he said, and this is killing the chance for meaningful conversation.

Dashiell Mortell of the Young Democrats responded by saying he also believes in free speech and the First Amendment.

It is important that free speech is applied equally, said James Allsup, president of the College Republicans, and that all forms of speech are protected. There is no legal definition for hate speech, he said, and it should not be allowed.

Mortell said there needs to be no-nonsense gun reform so every American can live safely. If a person is not able to board an airplane to fly, he said, they should not be able to buy a gun.

Scott said people already have to do background checks when purchasing guns from Federal Firearm Licensed dealers, and that this is not the best deterrent for violence. Criminals are still able to acquire guns through stealing or through straw purchases, he said, and disarming law-abiding citizens is not going to get rid of the problem.

“To address these issues at hand we need to address crimes,” Scott said.

Making it harder to buy guns helps the Blue Lives Matter movement, Mortell said, because it protects the lives of police officers. He also said we need legislation that will ban military-style guns and high capacity magazines and close the gun show loophole.

Allsup said we need to send a strong message from the top that our police are appreciated. President Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have been blaming police officers, he said, saying they are inherently racist. We need to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt, he said. There are some incidents where police act out of hand, he said, and those cases need to be dealt with quickly and justly. But 99 percent of the people given the job are not bad people, he said.

Matthew Sutherland of the Young Democrats said there is systemic racism in our criminal justice system. He said there are several solutions, including use of body cameras, officer accountability and equal enforcement of the law across classes. Good cops need to stand up to the bad ones, he said, and 99 percent of cops are not good if they are not willing to stand up to the bad cops.

Allsup said the answer to poverty is to increase the number of jobs. We are seeing a large exodus of jobs out of this country, he said, because it is becoming too hard to produce goods here.

“We need to realize that these jobs are not going to be here forever unless we take action,” he said.

He said the corporate tax needs to be reduced because companies are moving offshore to avoid taxes. By decreasing it, he said, they will want to stay here. He said the solution to poverty is a reduction in the size of government and the tax rate.

Sutherland said it is harder now to change social class than it used to be. What we need to do is address wealth income inequality, he said. We need to introduce a livable minimum wage because, he said, people living paycheck to paycheck should be able to have money left over after paying the bills to invest in themselves and their families.

Allsup said we need to work on community improvement and get rid of the name calling. He said cultural Marxism, which he referred to as the idea that everyone needs to be equally miserable, must be dispelled. If someone has an opinion, then they are called names, he said. Instead of jumping to a name such as racist, bigot or Marxist, he said people need to talk to each other and learn the facts.

“I hope that we can all argue based on facts,” he said.

After the debate, Sutherland said he thought the Young Democrats came across well.

“We had better ideas,” he said, “well, I’m a bit biased, but I hope we were able to convince people who were on the fence.”

Allsup said he thought the College Republicans performed better in the second debate than the first.

“I think our performance spoke for itself,” he said.