(CNN) -- Everything and nothing has changed since the last time President Donald Trump addressed the National Rifle Association convention.
Trump returns to the powerful lobby group's gathering Friday with national gun politics evolving after recent massacres but with the status quo of federal gun laws largely intact.
Last year, Trump's visit to the NRA was a hero's homecoming after the group helped put him in the White House following his unequivocally pro-Second Amendment campaign.
"You came through for me and I am going to come through for you," Trump told thousands of gun rights activists at last year's convention in Atlanta.
This time, Trump is more of a supplicant, needing vigorous turnout from pro-gun voters to offset what many Republicans fear could be a midterm election disaster in November.
The President is likely to highlight his staunch support for the Second Amendment and modest steps he has taken, under intense political heat, on gun safety this year.
Since he will be in a friendly crowd, there's no guarantee he will stick to gun issues: In such company, Trump is prone to wander off into monologues of political red meat -- from touting the confirmation of conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch to the potential success of his North Korea policy.
But even a welcoming space such as the NRA convention may bring a subliminal reminder of the cloud that has haunted him since his earliest days in the White House: allegations of election collusion with Russia.
The group is bracing for fresh scrutiny over its finances following allegations that a lifetime member and Russian government official, Alexander Torshin, had funneled money through the NRA to bolster the Trump campaign in 2016.
CNN's Sara Murray reported exclusively last week that the NRA is
