This is the “as long as programmers are perfect and remember to always do the right thing everywhere, everything will be great” argument.

Developers are not perfect and the footguns in languages have a cumulative effect. Any one thing isn’t necessarily a big deal but when you have multiple interacting footguns (always check for nil, nil interfaces don’t actually equal nil, default zero values need to be sane even when they make no sense, etc.) both the surface area for errors and the level of care needed to avoid them increases dramatically.