Storey looks at the role of firearms throughout the colonial period in South Africa (ending with the Boer War). Firearms, he finds, were diversely manifest through time. They developed from wildly inaccurate muzzle-loaders to more precise breech-loaders. On the frontier of the veld they were seen to serve one function, on farms another, near urban areas still another. British bureaucrats and law-makers, both in the metropole and within the colonial center (Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, D'urbanville) tried to control access to firearms, as a means of controlling the social sphere. Of course, firearms could also be means to challenge power. Therein lay much of the foundation for wrangling over access to firearms.
As a lens through which to view the social sphere firearms allow us to see particular things well - access to political power and speech, changing aspects of self-sufficiency and freedom - yet they can also be manifestations of these things. The question of which comes first tends to ground-out in circularity - each led to the other through a dynamic relationship. Do we find this a satisfying category of historical explanation? It is certainly a common one. This seems indicative of a broader ontology within historical scholarship.
