The University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) has dropped the tagline “Come and take it” from its sports team branding and banned the term from school events.
The school justified the ban by claiming the term has ties to supremacist groups and is anti-Mexican. University professor Ellen Clark stated in her petition to cancel the slogan that it “embodies both anti-Mexican and pro-slavery sentiment,” and continued saying that it “has carried those white supremacist beliefs from 1835 to today, and in that time has also been widely adopted by anti-government, pro-gun extremists, such as at the January 6th insurrection at the US Capital.”
The phrase “Come and take it” has a rich and deep history; it is odd to see a Texas school abandon it. The term can be traced as far back as 480 BC during the battle of Thermopylae in which Greek Spartans defended their country from the Persians. The term was popularized in America during the battle of Gonzales in Texas (1835) where citizens of the town defended it from the Mexican army.
The term has recently become associated with the 2A community and American gun owners, many supporters of the 2nd Amendment will use the term towards the government. That being said the term has been subject to all sorts of parody efforts and has even been used by other political movements in the country. There was no greater example of this than the pro-abortion movement using the tagline in Texas.
The University President bent over backwards to this one professor and a small group of students, this is all it takes for the gun grabbers to make changes. Be very aware of this fact as more serious battles come up in the 2A world.
