Now we’re hearing that Nancy Lanza, the deceased mother of Sandy Hook elementary school mass murderer Adam Lanza, was a “survivalist” (i.e., she believed that social breakdown was in the offing and that armed self-protection was a vital skill) who taught her sons how to shoot, who reportedly had nothing to do with teaching at Sandy Hook, and had home-schooled young Adam, who was obviously mentally unstable.

In other words, Nancy Lanza, 54, was a paranoid gun nut who, along with her divorced husband Peter (whom Nancy divorced in 2009), reared and educated a child-killing monster.

I’m saying this as a parent who understands that the right kind of parenting really counts, and that the wrong kind can be devastating. Nancy had principal custody of Adam over the last three years. One of her big parenting decisions was to pull him out of high school (“She wound up home-schooling him because she battled with the school district,” said Nancy’s ex-sister-in-law Marsha) and, one presumes, teaching him to be at least comfortable with (if not embrace) the idea that under certain circumstances, firing weapons might be a valid response to this or that threat.

A N.Y. Times story says Nancy Lanza was a “big, big gun fan,” that she seemed “high-strung, as if she were holding herself together,” and that she “often went to a local restaurant and music spot, My Place, where she sat at the bar” and that she “typically came to My Place alone.” High-strung, booze, guns…what does that tell you?

Survivalism is entirely a rightwing NRA backwoods-rube attitude (Nancy came from rural New Hampshire) so let’s call a spade a spade. Nancy Lanza had her friendly, socially positive sides, I’m sure, but she got a taste of her own karma when her son put a bullet in her face yesterday morning. Because she said to her son over and over, “Here, baby…this is a gun, and guns are cool…you need to learn how to shoot it.”

Adam has been described as probably having suffered from a personality disorder, “somewhat autistic” and possibly afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome. Which is a burden and no picnic but hardly psycho-killer gasoline. I’ve never heard anything about autism and/or Asperger’s Syndrome being any kind of spark or ingredient in the mind of a murderer. Has anyone?

Seriously — someone please explain how Nancy Lanza isn’t the Dr. Frankenstein who created the fiend.

Don’t believe anyone who knew Adam Lanza and claims there were no hints or signs that something dark or malevolent and possibly wicked was brewing within him. Without exception, family members and neighbors always lie after one of their own has been fingered as a psychopathic killer. They always say they never noticed anything strange and troublesome about the trigger-puller because if they had noticed something they would be partly to blame for what happened because they didn’t say anything. So they clam up. It’s that simple.