The House has voted to scrap an Obama administration regulation extending prohibitions on gun ownership to disabled social security recipients judged mentally incapable of managing their own affairs.

The vote to repeal the regulation was 235-180.

The vote was part of an effort to repeal a handful of regulations issued in Barack Obama’s final months and represents the first steps toward strengthening gun rights under Donald Trump.

The background checks rule established the criteria the Social Security Administration will follow when forwarding names to the criminal background check system.

Those fitting the criteria have a mental disorder so severe that they cannot work and need a representative to manage their benefits. The administration projected that the regulation would affect about 75,000 beneficiaries.

While the social security rule, finalized last year, had not been a high-profile issue for gun violence prevention groups, it generated sustained outrage among gun rights advocates. The National Rifle Association highlighted the issue for more than a year, calling it a “back-door gun grab”.

Along with gun rights advocates, some advocates for the disabled had also vocally opposed linking the inability to manage financial affairs with the inability to legally purchase a gun.

In a letter last year, the National Council on Disability, an independent federal agency, wrote: “There is, simply put, no nexus between the inability to manage money and the ability to safely and responsibly own, possess or use a firearm.”

It called the social security rule an “arbitrary linkage” that “unreasonably deprives individuals with disabilities of a constitutional right”, as well as increasing stigma around mental health.

The National Rifle Association, which has assumed a high-profile role in Trump’s White House, has eagerly anticipated Congress’ move to scrap the new rule.

“Congress’s decision to review the Obama administration’s back-door gun grab is a significant step forward in protecting a fundamental constitutional right for law-abiding gun owners,” Chris W Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement in January. “The NRA has been fighting this unconstitutional government overreach since it was first discussed.”

Some gun control advocates in Congress opposed the move, including the Democratic New York representative Carolyn Maloney.

“We’ve got it backwards. We shouldn’t be repealing gun safety rules, we should be strengthening them,” she said in a statement Thursday. “Gun violence is an epidemic in this country and we have done literally nothing in Congress about it since Republicans took the majority in the House in 2011.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report