The british government has begun talks about relaxing gun laws in order to help their shooters prepare for the 2012 olympics in london. sports minister richard caborn is to meet patrick johnson, secretary of the british shooting sports council, later this week.

    Special permission has been given for shooting to be staged in 2012, but britain's top competitors are currently forced to do most of their training in switzerland.

    Johnson said: "between now and the olympics, competitors need to train, but also, officials need practice and experience." "those two things need to be looked at fairly quickly if we are to have sufficient people in place by 2012."

    Legislation banning most types of handguns was introduced after the dunblane massacre in 1996 when thomas hamilton killed 16 schoolchildren and a teacher.

    Culture secretary tessa jowell said discussions on exemptions had taken place but no deal had been struck. "in the seven years between now and 2012 we will obviously keep this under review," said jowell, "but we would be reluctant to argue that we move from the legislation for which we know there is a lot of public support for good reason."

    A "section five" exemption would allow the use of pistols for specific reasons for specific purposes. this has already been used to allow pistols to come into britain for the 2002 commonwealth games in manchester.