Pull Record

[starre]

I need some help with the meaning of the verb "pull" here:

"At the ATF agents' request, Markell pulled his records and quickly found his own copy of the receipt for the Glock 19. He also saw that Cho had bought a $10 box of 50 9-mm practice rounds, commonly know as full metal jacket rounds because they don't expand on contact like hollow-point rounds."

I already checked some dictionaries, but couldn't find a good definition.


source: time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1611948,00.html

 

[probus]

"Pulled his records" means "retrieved the records pertaining to him from storage."

 

[starre]

Does "pull" explicitly include, besides the act of retrieval, the act of reviewing/examining something?

 

[probus]

Sure. The root of the usage goes back to the days of paper files that had to be pulled out of drawers. Nowadays it all goes on constantly in the background, and you can bet that the pulling computers are doing everything they can with the data they pull.