alt Hacker NewsGo is returning a copy of the slice, in the same way that C would return a copy of an int or struct if you returned it. The danger of C behaviour in this instance is that a stack allocated array decays into a pointer which points to the deallocated memory. Otherwise the behaviour is pretty similar between the languages.
I first wrote an answer about how local variables can survive through a pointer, but deleted it because you're right that this Go code doesn't even address locals. It's a regular value copy.