I think they're confusing languages with libraries
C is a systems programming language, its essentially an assembler on steroids, so its as safe or as risky as the programmers who use it. What problems you get with it come from its libraries. Its likely that these people, like many programmers, have never used a language outside an environment that includes the startup thread ("crt0" in old systems) or libraries so they fall into the trap of assuming that libraries are an inherent part of the language.
So, what language are you going to write this new language in? Relatively few languages are able to bootstrap themselves up using only tools written in the language.