Well, it depends on what you call a hitter.

Any time there’s money offered, the chances of someone taking it are non zero. It’s hoping to be lower on a platform like reddit, or even lemmy, but there are people out there willing to kill for money.

However, that’s different from someone doing it regularly, which is still different from a “professional” or contract killer. The difference is largely in methodology and pricing.

You aren’t going to get someone that’s very skilled at subtle or reliable activity, because they wouldn’t be responding via a public and security weak platform if that was the case.

Unless the platform reports it to a law enforcement agency, it’s not going to be an automatic preventive, but it would indeed be a clear reason to make a report to authorities.

Hiring a killer randomly is pretty much asking to be arrested, or in the case of this question, shoved into a facility and held against your will for as long as is deemed necessary.

It’s also a pretty damn low chance of success. Non zero, but low. Normally, when people want to hire a killer any way other than finding someone they already know and convincing them to do it, they’d have to know someone that knows someone.

You can find paid killers, if not serious professional killers, in most cities with gang/organized crime. The problem is that they aren’t usually going to even talk to an outsider, and they definitely won’t go DMing randos on reddit or whatever.

There’s been reporters that have made contact with that kind of killer and interviewed them. But it isn’t exactly a regular occurrence and there’s no way to properly use any interviews as evidence in most situations. Actually discussing the possibility of taking the job is likely to be admissible, and damning.

Now, it’s kinda funny you asked about going to a bar to look. While you aren’t likely to be successful, and may end up getting hurt rather than killed, organized criminals do tend to have favourite bars, which also tend to be money laundering fronts from what I’ve been told. So, if you knew the right places, you’d be more likely to succeed than asking on a forum. Still not likely, but not impossible either.

As a tangent, I was recently watching a short documentary about a reporter trying to investigate the matter. Even with her contacts and easily verifiable identity, she only found one person in the US willing to talk to her, and that guy was pretty unbelievable. Seemed more like some gang banger playing at being tough. Especially when compared to the South African killer she interviewed. But both it those were still not going to be easy to make contact with. You have to be vetted, or it ain’t happening