Given that one has plain C code, then it is possibly safer to run it when compiled to a memory safe runtime (with bounds checks, no pointers, etc.) than to use

Given that one has plain C code, then it is possibly safer to run it when compiled to a memory safe runtime (with bounds checks, no pointers, etc.) than to use a C to machine code compiler and call the compiled code from Lisp via a Foreign Function Interface (FFI).