I am asking because my first language was Java and after learning C / gnu AS it feels much more comfortable to actually have control over the resources you are using than relying on the magic the JRE does for you.
That's exactly the problem Java/JRE was trying to solve. People make mistakes. Given the large quantities of programers corporations hire, it is almost certain that mistakes, especially those dealing with hardware resources (e.g. memory), will happen. Java/JRE reduces a large part of them (e.g. memory allocation/deallocation due to GC) so corporations can hire average programers to do the majority of tedious tasks without blowing things (too much) off. You cannot have such guarantee with C/C++.
Leave the low level stuff to the JRE folks and spend your resources on doing stuff that directly makes you money or furthers your cause.