A newly-launched probe by New York’s attorney general, growing financial difficulties, and internal fighting within the National Rifle Association are raising questions about whether the powerful gun rights group could see its influence diminished in the 2020 election cycle.

It isn't the first time that NRA leadership has faced challenges that have forced it to try to rebound.

The group faced similar internal criticism after running cumulative deficits of $69 million between 1991 and 1993. Around the same time, it was heralded by conservatives for playing a key role in helping the GOP pick up 54 House seats and eight seats in the Senate in the historic 1994 midterm election.

But the current situation — a pileup of problems that includes the NRA suing its longtime ad agency for withholding business records and ousting its high-profile president Oliver North — comes as the organization faces well-financed gun control advocacy outfits like the Michael Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety and the organization Giffords, led by gun violence victim and former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Both organizations can match or beat the NRA's campaign spending.

“It is a moment of crisis. It may not be a perfect storm but it’s a pretty bad storm,” said Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York-Cortland whose research focuses on American gun laws. “Here’s the thing: The NRA may recover from this. They’ve recovered before from adversity. But their current problems put them in a bad position in respect to 2020.”

Indeed, the NRA for years has been one of the biggest forces in American politics, a group whose ability to mobilize and excite its huge roster of members has made it one of the mightiest forces in the national conversation.

But the NRA, which has nearly 5.5 million members, has experienced a sea change in fortunes over the last two years.

The February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., spurred the youth-led March for Our Lives gun control movement. The growth of the movement has coincided with the NRA’s favorability rankings sinking, according to national polling.

More than 30 NRA-backed Republican candidates lost in the 2018 midterm elections as gun control advocacy groups outspent them in federal elections. The gun control advocacy groups’ individual wins at the polls came after the NRA spent more than $50 million during the 2016 election cycle to help elect President Trump and other pro-gun rights candidates at the federal and state levels.

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'Fight for our political lives'

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's chief executive, acknowledged during last weekend’s annual meeting in Indianapolis that the group is under siege.

“We are in the fight of our political lives here at the National Rifle Association,” LaPierre said in his address to the group's membership. “This fight and its outcome are not just going to affect the NRA. It’s going to affect the rights of all groups, of all kinds, in every corner of this country as to whether or not you can engage in open and free speech without the fear of political retaliation.”

In August, the NRA said in a lawsuit it's facing deep financial problems and it might go broke because of what it calls a “blacklisting” campaign by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration. New York ruled that the NRA's insurance program, "Carry Guard," was illegal because it gave liability protection to gun owners for acts where there was "intentional wrongdoing."

The state continues to step up pressure on the NRA. New York’s Attorney General Letitia James confirmed this week that her office has launched an investigation into the NRA’s nonprofit status. James, who during her campaign last year called the NRA a “terrorist organization,” told voters she would investigate whether the group is complying with state not-for-profit rules.

Meanwhile, the gun-control advocacy group Giffords filed a lawsuit last month against the FEC for failing to act against the NRA for allegedly using shell corporations to coordinate campaign spending with federal candidates over the last three election cycles.

The NRA’s problems have even caught Trump’s attention. Earlier this week, he took to Twitter to urge the group to “get its act together quickly” while also accusing the Cuomo administration of illegally investigating the NRA. The organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Infighting goes public

The attorney general’s probe comes as a messy internal NRA fight has spilled into public view.

Oliver North, who had served as the group’s president, stepped down from his post during the NRA’s annual meeting last weekend after a power struggle with LaPierre.

LaPierre wrote a letter to the board before the start of the annual meeting accusing North of pressuring him to "resign or there will be destructive allegations made against me and the NRA," according to the Washington Post. North previously wrote a letter to the board’s executive committee, alleging LaPierre had made more than $200,000 of wardrobe purchases and charged them to a vendor, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The back-and-forth followed the NRA suing its longtime ad agency, the Oklahoma-based firm Ackerman McQueen and it’s subsidiary Mercury Group, for withholding business records.

Ackerman operates the digital NRATV platform and is credited with creating some of the NRA’s most memorable messaging. (Ackerman was behind the late actor and NRA president Charlton Heston’s famous Second Amendment rallying cry that gun control advocates would have to take his guns “from my cold, dead hands.”)

Ackerman generated $40 million in revenue from the NRA in 2017, according to the gun rights group’s lawsuit. North had entered an employment contract with Ackerman around the same time he was installed as president of the NRA, the lawsuit says. LaPierre’s wife, Susan, also briefly was employed by Ackerman, according to the New Yorker magazine.

The accusations of financial impropriety as well as the non-profit status probe have raised concerns among some rank-and-file members about the long-term health of the organization.

Rank-and-file members

Tiffany Johnson, an NRA member from Memphis, says she worries that NRA leadership may be “in a bit of a bubble and may not appreciate the seriousness of what faces them.”

During last week’s annual meeting, a resolution was floated calling on members of the NRA's audit committee as well as LaPierre to resign because of the concerns about fiscal management with the Ackerman account. Because of the ongoing litigation, the Board of Directors said it would consult with legal counsel on the resolution.

Johnson, who said she doesn't have an opinion on whether LaPierre or others should step down, penned a letter earlier this week that has been signed by 240 other NRA members. It calls on the group’s board members who have ties to Ackerman to recuse themselves from voting on the resolution regarding the audit committee and LaPierre.

She said there is growing sentiment in the rank-and-file membership that the NRA has become distracted from its core mission of protecting gun owners rights and gun safety. Some also question the tone and content of NRATV.

“I know the people that I see and converse with and connect with on social media, regular people who are not million dollar donors but who support the Second Amendment," she said. "They are terrified that the organization is making some really bad strategic decisions that may seem to pay off in the short term but could have dire consequences down the line."

Other NRA members pushed back against the notion that the current controversies amount to a watershed moment.

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Rhonda Ezell is a lifetime NRA member and plaintiff in a landmark federal lawsuit that overturned a Chicago ban on gun ranges in the city limits. Ezell, who was honored as a “hero” of the NRA at last weekend’s conference, said that internal strife has been overblown by the media and gun control advocacy groups.

“If there is a problem in the NRA leadership, they will take care of it internally,” said Ezell, who co-founded the group Chicago Guns Matter and is a member of the gun rights group DC Project. “We have billionaires that are backing these stories. I’m talking about Bloomberg who funds Everytown, who is paying for The Trace (a news organization dedicated to reporting on gun violence), who is paying Moms Demand Action, who is also bringing in children to do their dirty work … which is wrong.”

Shifting demographics have made advocating for tougher gun laws less of a risky notion for Democratic contenders. Generation Z voters, ages 18 to 23 for next year’s voting, will make up one of 10 eligible voters. Young Americans, ages 18 to 29, broadly support Congress passing stricter gun regulations, according to an April 2018 NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll.

Already, Democratic hopefuls Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, have put the issue at the center of their pitch as they campaign in early primary and caucus states.

Arkadi Gerney, who previously managed the Bloomberg-started Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said the shifting dynamic could lead to Democrats in 2020 speaking out more about gun control and the NRA than Trump will herald his bonafides as a gun owners’ champion.

“The conventional wisdom among political hacks in both parties has shifted enormously,” Gerney said. “There was a lot of momentum for the old view that gun control is a loser, the NRA is powerful, and you don’t mess with it. The dam broke in 2018.”

Follow USA TODAY national political reporter Aamer Madhani on Twitter: @AamerISmad