Most programmers who attack C have seen the consequences of a memory-unsafe, type-unsafe language dominating systems programming throughout the years. I remember the period during the early 2000s when "buffer overflow exploits" were an entire industry. I also remember the strange allure of C and C++ in beginner programmer circles. The logic goes something like this: "they are powerful languages, all of the big and popular software projects are written in them, so they must be the best". Their next step was to go on to start a new generation of unsafe and vulnerable programs and libraries, and so on.
Now that we have the tools and technology to do better, we should really be making some efforts to push for them. The goal isn't change right now, but starting the process early seems like a good idea.