There’s still one man in America who doesn’t know that you can’t bring weapons onto airplanes.
A knucklehead from Pennsylvania found out the hard way that guns and air travel don’t mix when he walked up to a security checkpoint at JFK Wednesday and plunked a pistol down into the X-ray scanner tray as if it were his keys or wallet.
Shocked TSA agents’ jaws dropped when they saw Richard Forti, 55, casually flash the .32-caliber handgun.
He was immediately seized by Port Authority cops, who found another weapon on him — a pair of “cat eye” brass knuckles, which have two metal spikes on the top that look like cat ears.
Forti — who hails from Annville Township, Pa. — was trying to catch a plane to Los Angeles when he showed the gun at 7:30 a.m.
PAPD cops say he lacked both a permit to cary the weapon in New York City and in Pennsylvania.
He was charged with two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon — a class C felony that can be punished by up to 15 years in prison. He was awaiting arraignment Wednesday night.
Forti’s older brother, Steven Forti, 58, told The Post Forti was not the troublemaking type, even though he was diagnosed with schizophrenia about a decade ago.
“Is he in jail?” the elder brother asked incredulously, when told of the bust. He then added: “We want to get him out as soon as possible.”
Steven Forti said he believed his brother’s mental condition — for which he takes medication — played a role in the JFK stunt.
“If he put it on the conveyer belt, he must not have known there was anything wrong with having it. He probably didn’t mean any trouble.”
He described his sibling as a “really laid back, nice, mellow person.”
Forti’s other brother, Roland Forti, also defended him as basically a good guy.
“He doesn’t work. He’s on disability. He’s not a violent person. He’s just a sick person,” Roland Forti said.
The seizure was the third time a firearm had been recovered by the TSA at JFK so far this year, officials said.