While I don’t condone violence that is not the only possible consequence. If you call me an asshole that is your right, but if I disinvite you from the party I was planning as a result that is not a ‘free speech issue’.
People say this a lot but i doubt anyone actually literally believes this.
If the state executes you as a consequence of your speech, it is an unambigious free speech violation no matter how you interpret that term.
What people really mean is its not a blanket protection against every consequence, but they hide that part because then you have to explain which consequences are reasonable and which are not which is complicated and requires nuance.
Honestly, I find this to be very manipulative rhetoric. Effectively, it makes the notion of free speech mean absolutely nothing. The problem here is that people want to pretend they are for absolute free speech, because saying something else is socially punished. But they are not in reality, sometimes for good reasons, so they resort to this sort of sophistry.
You can say what you want in North Korea, freely. It is just that you wont have freedom from consequence int he form of torture and death.