State lawmakers attempted to rally support Monday for legislation that would increase the penalties for sexual offenders.

Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington, who is spearheading the effort, said the legislation would require people who are on probation, parole or community supervision to wear electronic monitoring as long as they are required to register as a sex offender.

Sen. David Thomas, R-Greenville, said that "the category of people that we are talking about is so dangerous that we need to have something that puts them in a special group so that we know where they are all the time."

Both Thomas and Knotts made several stops around the state Monday in support of the legislation.

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There are more than 8,600 registered sex offenders in South Carolina, said Margaret Frierson, executive director of the South Carolina branch of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

There are more than 550,000 registered offenders nationwide, Frierson said. Of those, 100,000 are unaccounted for, she said.

Knotts said the Jessica Lunsford Act, also known as Jessie's Law, will be a better law, one that will be more enforceable to help fight the number of offenders who are unaccounted for and missing.

"We don't need to be sitting around in South Carolina waiting for one of our children to be a victim like Mark Lunsford's," he said.

Mark Lunsford, father of Jessica Lunsford, for whom the bill is named, traveled across the state with the group of legislators, law enforcement officials and activists.

Lunsford crusaded in Florida, where Jessica was kidnapped and killed by an unregistered sex offender, to get similar legislation passed.

Although the stop in Greenville was the third of the group's four stops for the day, it wasn't any easier for Lunsford to share his story.

"I don't want any more children hurt," Lunsford said as he struggled to hold back his tears.

He urged those gathered in the auditorium at Greenville Technical College to take action, to know who their neighbors are and to lend their support to their legislators and law enforcement.

The legislation would increase the penalty for lewd lascivious molestation of a child to life in prison or a split sentence of a minimum of 25 years in prison and lifetime electronic monitoring.

Thomas said that lengthening prison sentences for sexual predators would not noticeably affect capacity issues because of the smaller percentage that the group makes up of the state's prison population.

Also in the proposed bill are increases in the time that a sexual predator must wait before being allowed to petition to have the designation removed, increases in sex offender registration and reporting requirements.

Another change in the proposed legislation would make convicted sexual predators who murder their victims eligible for the death penalty in capital cases.

Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said about 40 members of the state senate have signed on to the legislation, which should be up for a vote next year.