Senior Republicans in Congress are expecting turmoil inside the National Rifle Association to sharply curtail the group’s participation in the 2020 campaign, conceding that they have lost confidence in the premiere gun rights organization.

The NRA has been a key ally of the Republican Party, mobilizing critical support for President Trump in 2016. But a crippling civil war for control of the influential gun advocacy group has strained finances and sparked leadership changes, leaving Republicans in the trenches of the battle for the House and Senate, fearing it has gone astray. They are not planning on political muscle from the NRA next year.

“We would love to have company,” said Steven Law, a close confidant of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the chief strategist behind the Kentucky Republican’s affiliated super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund. “But we’re preparing to shoulder as much of the work in 2020 as possible.”

Republicans in Washington have long been reverential of the NRA because of the strong reputation it carries with grassroots conservatives, who tend to care deeply about the Second Amendment. In many GOP primaries, an NRA endorsement is more effective for winning over voters than backing from any other group. But frustration with the NRA has mounted in Republican circles, as material support for the party has diminished after it went all-in for Trump three years ago.

In the 2016 election cycle, the NRA political arm spent $19.2 million on independent expenditure advertising, according to Federal Election Commission filings. In the cycle that followed that saw the GOP House majority threatened and then extinguished while Senate Republicans struggled as well, the NRA spent just $8.2 million on political ads. Democratic-aligned gun control groups spent significantly more.

Republican insiders close to senior GOP congressional leaders are bracing for even less help from the NRA in 2020. In interviews, more than a half-dozen well-connected GOP operatives voiced a range of concerns about the group. Topping the list is a basic lack of trust — in personnel, strategy, and the organization’s attentiveness to the GOP’s down-ticket challenges.

[Related: Trump: NRA to be 'fully' respected in debate over background checks]

Revelations about the struggle for power inside the NRA, and the factional competition for its resources, are motivating this insecurity. But so too is the purge of Chris Cox, who for years ran the NRA’s political operation. With Cox out, Republicans say they have lost a key ally inside the organization, one who had the standing to convince NRA leaders to invest in their races, expenditures that were not always universally supported internally.

“Nobody understands what the NRA is doing right now. Nobody feels safe with what they might be doing in House and Senate races,” said a veteran Republican operative who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. Added another well-placed GOP strategist involved in congressional races: “I’m not counting on them, let’s just put it that way.”

The NRA is dismissing Republicans’ anxiety about the controversy that has clouded the organization for more than a year. Officials claim the group has never been more capable, and they signaled in a statement to the Washington Examiner that the NRA is preparing to invest heavily in 2020.

“The NRA is stronger today than we have been heading into any election cycle,” spokeswoman Amy Hunter said. “In fact, we have significantly higher membership numbers compared to the lead-up to 2016. The entire gun rights movement has also been galvanized at unprecedented levels by the radical rhetoric coming out of the anti-gun camp. We have momentum on our side.”

The NRA is raising money from small grassroots donors at a healthy clip — $6.7 million through July 31 — suggesting that it has the robust support of its approximately 5.5 million activist members.

Calls for new federal restrictions on firearms from Democratic presidential contenders in the aftermath of a spate of mass shootings over the summer, especially Beto O’Rourke’s proposal to confiscate certain semi-automatic rifles such as the popular AR-15, could further energize NRA members who live in 2020 battlegrounds.

A pitched partisan battle over gun laws could help the NRA put recent controversies behind it and possibly motivate the group to deliver more political support for congressional Republicans than many in the GOP are expecting.