Probably right. One of the Rust developers suggested something similar (but more nuanced, because Rust is a highly nuantial language):

http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2014/05/13/focu...

"Put another way, it’s become clear to me over time that the problems with data races and memory safety arise when you have both aliasing and mutability. The functional approach to solving this problem is to remove mutability. Rust’s approach would be to remove aliasing."

Local variables themselves are naturally non-aliased, although the objects they point to might be.

PS apologies to anyone who's seen it before for trotting that link out yet again!