Each European country has its own laws, but most countries never had anything resembling "freedom of speech" as an American would understand it. Every country has a list of "limitations" on free speech. It is also not something people care about.
Article 10 of the ECHR as interpreted by the ECtHR is very different from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as presently interpreted by SCOTUS.
It's also worth noting that the First Amendment as presently interpreted by SCOTUS protects some speech that was not always unambiguously protected; see e.g., a good fraction of humans pre-1970-or-so, the evolution of the court's treatment of obscenity, speech in the schoolhouse, and so on. In some sense, even previous Americans didn't have freedom of speech as a modern American would understand it.
In fact it lists the US below pretty much every European country, and the US is known to have some of the most permissive free speech laws.
But look at all the US kids having armed police sent to their homes because they swore on Xbox live.
I'm assuming you have links or evidence to back those claims up. Or are you mistaking this for kids getting swatted[1], because I certainly haven't heard of kids getting in trouble with police for swearing on Xbox live and I feel like that would make national news.
Making false statements to police is not protected speech. In every instance of this happening that I'm aware of when police are able to track down the individual(s) responsible, they are prosecuted, generally to the fullest extent of the law. It's dangerous to make something like a murder/suicide threat, and it should be treated & prosecuted as such. Yes, the police probably overreact, but they don't necessarily know it's a hoax.
I'm not talking about threats, just opinions.
And I'm not aware of any other sort of opinions that are illegal to state in America. Even denying or applauding genocides and other atrocities is legal in America.