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what does "to show the action of the hammer."mean?
【He had what she called "a Walter Mitty streak." Like a little boy he would watch a passing jet from the fantail of the Honey Fitz, wondering aloud if he could fly it, picturing himself wrestling with the controls. "I mean it," he said now, building the daydream. "There was the rain, and the night, and we were all getting jostled. Suppose a man had a pistol in a briefcase." He gestured vividly, pointing his rigid index finger at the wall and jerking his thumb twice to show the action of the hammer. "Then he could have dropped the gun and the briefcase—" in pantomime he dropped them and whirled in a tense crouch—"and melted away in the crowd."】
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When referring to guns, the hammer is the part that strikes the firing pin and causes the weapon to fire. In many pistols you can see this hammer move when the trigger is squeezed. If you pretend that your hand is a pistol and point with your forefinger having your thumb straight up, it simulates the action that the hammer makes when you bend your thumb forward and down. It is this action that the author is describing.
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